


Fire & Brimstone

by FrostbitePanda



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Compliant Major Character Death, Drift Compatibility, F/M, Gen, Giant Robots, Giant monsters, I tried my best, Jon is NOT a Targaryen, Jonerys Remix 2020, Monsters, PTSD, Pacific Rim Crossover, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sexual Tension, Some pining, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Violence, and theory, but this is fanfic we do what we want, crossover fic, dany and jon are not related, despite the movie not having any, i can't resist guys okay im sorry, like right upfront, mentions of mental health issues, modern/future westeros, mythology tie ins whenever possible, of course lol, our idiots are so Drift compatible you don't even know, prior viewing of film not necessary, take the technology, the drift is one hell of a wingman, there will be smut, this is definitely the most ridiculous thing i've ever done, tragic backstories galore, with a big grain of salt plz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 56,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostbitePanda/pseuds/FrostbitePanda
Summary: “The Long Night”, they called it. A perhaps deft reference to a long ago myth about the end of the world. Back when magic was thought to be real— when the dead walked and dragons roamed the skies. When the inexplicable was contained within fables and fairytales.When the shoe fits, Jon thought. But The Long Night was nothing more than a job, to him. A verygoodjob, but still. This was simple routine.(in which Jon and Dany are very Drift compatible, if you get my meaning. Pacific Rim AU.)
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 190
Kudos: 470
Collections: Jonerys Remix 2020





	1. ACT ONE

**Author's Note:**

> this story is one i've been wanting to write for a long time, so thanks to [Ashleyfanfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashleyfanfic) for setting this up and giving me an excuse to write it. 
> 
> it follows the major beats of the film, but prior knowledge/viewing of said film is not required in the least, though you should just go ahead and watch it anyways. it's pretty rad. 
> 
> just a note: Jon and Dany **are not** related in any way in this story, which may seem weird considering wha you'll learn about Dany's work later on. But, yeah... Rhaegar is not his dad. 
> 
> enjoy!

**_Hardhome Base, The Northern States, Westeros_ **

_Year Seven of the Long Night_

Jon awoke to the sirens. 

He was out of his bunk and pulling on his Dragon Scale bodysuit within a minute, the flood lights strobing harshly in his sleep-scratchy eyes. 

_Shouldn’t have had that third whiskey._

“Oy, Stark!” he shouted to his much more sluggish half-brother still rubbing at his eyes from the top bunk. Robb had drank Jon under the table once again last night. Or was it just four hours ago? “Get your ass up!”

 _”Mayday. Class 3 Walker. Nine miles out. T-minus 1 hour to landfall,”_ the cool, monotone voice of the ever-present and ever annoying Targaryen AI called aloud into their little room. _”Longclaw crew report to bay 5 immediately.”_

“I’m up, I’m up,” Robb Stark groused to the ceiling, as if the AI could hear him. “Keep your pants on, lady.” He swung his legs over the bed and hopped down to the floor.

Jon laughed and tossed his half-naked brother his suit. “Says the bloke with no pants on.”

“Fair enough,” Robb grumbled before going about getting dressed. 

Sleep deprivation and hangovers pushed aside for now, him and Robb fell into muscle memory— having been drilled, trained and experienced enough to suit up blindfolded within three minutes. 

“Ready for another one, Snow?” Robb asked him as they headed for the door. 

“Always, Stark.”

+++

The command room was buzzing when they arrived. Techs and engineers hastily gulped coffee and energy drinks as they scurried from console to console, from monitor to monitor. The operation and maintenance of a Dragon Unit wasn't just down to the two pilots in the cockpit during battle, though they were the ones to get all the glory and credit. Behind the scenes, there were at least two dozen people working around the clock for each enormous machine— the world’s one, true defense against the mysterious Walkers that had been emerging continually from the dark, radioactive ruins of Old Valyria for nearly a decade, now. 

“The Long Night”, they called it. A perhaps deft reference to a long ago myth about the end of the world. Back when magic was thought to be real— when the dead walked and dragons roamed the skies. When the inexplicable was contained within fables and fairytales. 

When the shoe fits, Jon thought. But The Long Night was nothing more than a job, to him. A very _good_ job, but still. This was simple routine. 

Through the large bay windows, Jon could see the body of his and Robb’s so-called Dragon Unit being prepped for battle. Sparks showered from various cranes and cherry pickers, the miles and miles of wiring within the arms, legs, and torso being double and triple checked. 

Longclaw was one of the oldest of the Dragon Units still in commission around the world. A Mach 3 Unit, Wildfire powered, and it was theirs and it was lethal. Jon felt a rush of anticipation at the sight of her— all white steel and gleaming chrome, a snarling dire wolf stenciled in dripping gray paint on the shoulder. Even currently headless, she was a fearsome thing to behold.

Jon had always thought that “dragon” was an odd term for the machines that fought the monsters. They looked nothing like dragons. And besides, dragons were always the monsters in the stories. 

He supposed when Targaryen Industries was footing most of the considerable bill for the Dragon Unit Program, it made sense from a PR standpoint. 

“How are my two favorite rangers doing?” Commander Jeor Mormont asked him and Robb as they approached. 

“You flatter us, Commander,” Robb answered with a grin. He lifted his arms, readying himself for the waiting and eager medics to give both of them their cursory physical and mental examination before they suited up. 

“What are we up against this time, Commander?” Jon asked. 

Jeor frowned and looked down at his tablet, swiping at the screen with his finger until a grainy picture from one of the Beacon drones appeared before them. Jon grimaced. The beast was bulky, with a huge, flat head and a gruesome horn protruding from it. Its eyes glowed blue and malevolent, like all the others. “We’re calling it ‘Blade Head’.”

Robb pulled a face. “Not your best, Commander.”

Jeor shrugged. “At any rate, we reckon you’ll want to tire the thing out rather than go on the offensive immediately. Looks like it’ll charge, head and blade first.”

“Understood,” Robb answered with a pointed look to Jon. He rolled his eyes and stepped forward as still more techs swarmed both him and Robb, clicking on their sleek Valyrian steel battle armor. Jon always thought about the knights and heroes from the old tales during this step of their routine— how the knights had teams of pages and stewards to dress them for battle. Only now, the knights were riding the dragons into battle, instead of going off to slay them.

 _Like true Targaryens._

“Have you taken any drugs, prescribed or otherwise?” a medic asked him tiredly, not even looking up from her clipboard. 

“No, ma'am.”

“Any nightmares, new or worsening illness or thoughts of suicide?” 

_Haven’t dreamt about Winterfell in ashes since I discovered whiskey._ “No, ma'am.”

With the laughably short and perfunctory “mental fitness” exam done and their suits secured, Jon and Robb made for the cockpit doors. 

“Drop in or walk out?” Robb asked Jeor. 

“Walk out, I’m afraid.” 

They both nodded with shared looks of exasperation. It was infinitely better to get flown out on copter wires and dropped in. Preserved time and energy. Pilots could only spend so much time in the Drift before all their strength was depleted. Jon and Robb could max out at 50 minutes— one of the longest pilot times on record, but still. 

_Likely the copter pilots are all still drunk. Or Targ Industries doesn't want to pay for a drop in. Probably both._

Resigned, they entered the cock pit, or the “head” of their Unit. As long as he had been doing this, Jon still couldn't quite get used to it— a room made of steel and chrome, wires and gears and pistons. It was like something out of one of those fucking pulp fiction comics he used to read as a kid. 

Him and Robb stepped into the so-called ‘stirrups’, metal arms that clamped over their feet and would allow them to march the machine out into the sea. Two techs secured them into the main computer via a thick wire clicking home between their shoulder blades with an electric _‘hiss’_. 

“Thanks,” Jon told the tech who handed him his helmet, a web of wires sprouting from it like reeds. The final piece of equipment that would sink both him and Robb into the strange world of the Drift. 

He looked to his brother. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

They pulled on their helmets at the same time and Jon immediately felt as though he were falling forward, his head strangely weightless and full all at once. A rush of warmth, a stream of images— him and Robb, small and clumsy running through the yard at Winterfell. Robb crying over a dead kitten. Catelyn Stark sneering at Jon from over the dinner table. 

_Breathe,_ he told himself, _let it flow._

His mind steadied, like a ship finding calmer waters. His breath filled his lungs, his arms and legs found their weight, and the fog lifted. His brother was smirking at him, excitement clearly getting the better of him. 

_”Neural handshake, complete,”_ the AI called out. 

“Let's get this bastard,” Jon heard Robb say within his head. 

+++

His muscles strained and creaked as he marched Longclaw, hollow and broken, through the icy sea. 

He couldn't feel pain anymore, though a wound in his side seeped blood from some piece of clever shrapnel that had found its mark through a chink in his armor. 

He had to do it alone. No one person could do it alone, but Jon had to. Had to make it back though Jon did not know why. 

His brother was gone. 

Robb Stark… the Young Wolf, a Ranger First Class of the United Confederation Army, the golden child of the Northern States… his copilot. His brother. 

Jon could see the gray smear of the beach in the distance, but it hardly registered, all his senses far, far away. The only sound in his ears was the screech of metal as the monster clawed through the fuselage of Longclaw as good as paper. The only image in his mind was Robb’s wide, shocked eyes as he was plucked from the cockpit like an egg from a nest. The only feeling in his heart was his brother’s bones being crushed in a hellion’s jaws, their minds still tethered in the Drift. 

The Walker had been larger than any Class 3 they had ever wrangled with. Class 3s had been the standard for the past two years, nothing special. Class 1 and 2 Walkers were nearly extinct for all they knew, much to humanity’s misfortune. 

That monster had been no Class 3, and he and Robb had learned it to their peril. 

The fucker’s bones would lay forever on the sea floor, gods willing, but his brother was gone. 

_Step, step... step…._ He himself was a machine, driven onwards but numb. Hollow. Nothing left to him. 

Longclaw trembled, wobbled, came crashing into the frosty surf, and Jon knew no more. 

+++

**_Dragon Pit Base, King’s Landing, Crown Principalities_ **

_Year Ten of The Long Night_

Dany pushed her welding shield back from her face, blowing a breath out through her lips. She stood and craned her neck from side to side to get the kinks out of her spine as she admired her work. A clean, quicksilver seam shone in the harsh glare of Bay Nine’s flood lights. 

She looked up and felt some of her glow of accomplishment wash away. Still so much work to do. 

She sighed and patted a gloved hand to the machine’s would-be solar plexus. “Until tomorrow, Balerion.” 

She pulled her gloves off and yanked the controls of the cherry picker back to carry her to one of the many levels of catwalks that criss-crossed the enormous floor of Dragon Pit Base: the largest— and most secretive— of all Dragon Unit bases left in the world. 

“Headed back?” Missy called from the level above her. Her brilliant programming friend was ‘tapped in’, repairing what Missy deemed to be ‘the most disastrous code that ever had the misfortune of somehow being functional’. 

“You should consider it sometime, Missy,” Dany shouted back as the cherry picker bellied up to the cat walk. “You know… eating?” 

Missy yanked her headphones off her head, her poofy hair pushed back and looking ridiculous. Dany could just hear the clamor of drums and guitar from where she stood. “What’s that? You giving me lessons about self care?”

Dany flicked her off and Missy laughed. “Seriously, though… you got any more metrics for me?” 

“For the tenth time, Missy, I won’t have anything new until the new recruits get here.” _Or maybe just one recruit._

Missy rolled her eyes. “Well, when will that be?”

Dany felt herself deflate and shrugged. She’d been asking the same question— to herself and her brother and anyone else who would listen— for months now. She had so much work that could be done, so much innovation that could be pursued, if she could only convince just one fucking person to join her cause.

Missy shook her head and put her headphones back on, her frustration mirroring Dany’s own. 

Dany sighed and continued down the catwalk, her feet taking her to her quarters with no real thought. 

“Ah, if it isn’t Captain Ahab. Caught your white whale yet?” a familiar and most unwelcome voice called to her, breaking into her thoughts. 

“Tyrion,” she greeted tersely. She really had no ill will for the clever dwarf who served as their VP of Dragon Unit Operations, but he was usually the precursor of many headaches for Dany. She also did not much appreciate his weird, niche, vaguely derogatory nickname for her, but that was another matter altogether. “What’s up?”

He was smiling at her, as if he actually had some good news. “Your brother would like to see you.” 

She scoffed. “Tell him I’m busy.” 

“That’s what I told him last time. And the time before that… and I believe the time before—“

“What does he want?” Dany cut across him.

Tyrion preened. “He wants to talk about the result of a certain… recruitment effort, I believe.” His face shifted from pleased to genuine concern as he looked her over, taking in her soot-stained face and the tangled mess of her hair. “Though, I can tell him that you may wish to clean yourself up before—“ 

Dany pushed past him and made for the elevators, her heart hammering with a premature hope.

+++

“We found him.”

Rhaegar was known for many things, but small talk and skirting around the point was not one of them. Dany could appreciate that about her brother, though it did rock her a bit. They had not seen each other in nearly two weeks, after all. 

She sat down in front of his desk and pulled the file that laid on top of it towards her. She scanned the vitals… she knew those like the back of her hand already, but paused on the picture. 

She had seen The White Wolf on TV many times years ago. Back when Dragon pilots were rock stars and traveled the late night circuits like any political dignitary or pop celebrity. Jon Snow, the dark, taciturn counterpart to his charming, much more loquacious brother as they sat across from Renly Baratheon or the like. 

The picture that stared back her now… was _different._ Though quiet and obviously not fond of cameras in his face (she could relate), she always remembered Jon Snow smiling. A certain light in his eyes that shone out to the world to tell anyone who cared to look that he loved what he did, that he believed he was doing something good for the world. 

This man looked… defeated. Dark, striking eyes dulled and diminished, beard grown out and unkempt, face thinner and paler. Still handsome, but drawn thin and ragged.

“So…” she began, tapping on the field labeled ‘current location’, “he’s at the North Wall?” She was not able to keep the derision from her voice. 

“Yes, he’s at the North Wall,” Rhaegar replied with a sigh, knowing all too well her thoughts about said Walls. “Many a man and woman are at Walls, now.”

“Because we’ve admitted defeat,” she snapped, pushing the file away from her and leaning back in her chair, arms crossed. “Because the economy has gone to shit and it’s _our fault_.”

“Enough, Dany, I can’t do this with you right now.” 

_When can you ever?_ she thought sullenly to herself. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that her brother was trying to do all he could, but she _also_ knew that if Rhaegar did not fully face the truth… the real, awful truth, that nothing would truly be done until it was all too late. 

Her brother turned to face the wide window at his back. It overlooked Blackwater Bay, glittering like a dark jewel in the midsummer sun, red and sinking into twilight. And in the distance, the gray tangle of scaffolding, rebar and concrete hundreds of meters thick and high could just be seen through the haze of King’s Landing ever-present smog. The Blackwater Wall… to push back the onslaught of Walkers from the east. 

The Walls were a feat of engineering… truly. They would be a marvel, if it wasn’t so fucking depressing.

She leaned forward in her chair, looking over the file again. “So when will he be here?” 

“I’ve sent Seargant Stark to retrieve him.” 

Dany raised her eyebrows at this news. “I hate to say that I’m impressed,” she offered her brother with a little grin. “If she can’t convince her own brother to join us, then surely no one can.” 

Rhaegar nodded, allowing himself a tiny, satisfied smile. “She seemed most eager to go. She hasn't seen him in years, she tells me. I have every reason to believe she’ll succeed.” 

He turned back to the window, and Dany watched as something in his posture changed. His shoulders rose, his back stiffened and he turned around to face her again. “But, Dany, I have to be sure about this,” he went on, lowering himself into his plush office chair with a sigh. “I can’t just ask a man that we know so little about to reenter a service that was the source of so much pain.”

“‘That we know so little about’?” Dany repeated, incredulous. “Rhaegar, he was basically a rockstar for more than three years. All those old-timer Dragon pilots were. Anything you want to know is readily available.” She waved to the file in front of her as exhibit ‘A’. “Besides,” she pressed, seeing the line of skepticism deepen between his brows, “he was an Army Ranger. He signed away his right to privacy long ago.” 

“Yes, but he is not anymore,” Rheagar countered hotly. “He was discharged with the highest honors.” 

Admittedly, she did not know what to say to refute that very glaring fact.

Rhaegar leaned toward her over the top of his desk, eyes sharp and questing. “What I don’t understand Dany… We’ve been gathering candidates for you and your study for almost a year and almost _all_ of them are green... never even been in the Drift. The most experienced have only logged 30 hours in a simulator.” He shook his head, brow furrowed. “The ones who aren’t as green as grass already have copilots… they don’t need trials and training and whatever else. Why do you want Jon Snow? An ‘old-timer’ as you yourself said?” 

Dany licked her lips, trying to find a way to describe her motivations without sounding crazy. 

The Drift was something that no one fully understood until they were in it, and even then it was a dangerous realm to explore. Especially alone. It was something not quite of this world… or maybe so very much of this world humanity simply did not have the words or numbers to properly put it to page. 

_That_ was her drive. Her work. To measure the Drift and put it to page. 

“Jon Snow is the only living ex-pilot that has not shown signs of endemic and dangerous mental deterioration after years of exposure in the Drift,” she supplied, words chosen carefully.

“He has PTSD,” Rhaegar pointed out. 

“Yes, but who wouldn’t?” Dany asked with a huff of disbelief. “His brother was ripped out of their Dragon Unit while they were still connected. We have countless cases of pilots who retire on honorable discharge… pilots who haven’t been through a _tenth_ of what Jon Snow has been through, and almost all of them end up like—” she stopped short, the sound of their brother’s name not able to fully leave her throat. 

Rhaegar peered at her under his solemn brow, his lips pursed, the pain in his eyes fleeting, but unmistakable. Their brother was a subject that was not to be broached and they sat in a tense and suffocating quiet for a time as they allowed the memory of what had happened to him wash away. 

“I see,” he began slowly, voice gone soft and pensive, as if coming to a sudden understanding. He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands before him, as if she were an intriguing potential business partner. “And I’m assuming if we could somehow study—“

“Not ‘somehow’, Rhaegar,” she interjected, bristling a bit. “Do you have so little faith? I’ve worked for years on these trials and metrics. I’ve done them all myself countless times!”

Her brother sighed, shoulders sagging in exasperation. “It’s not that I don’t have faith, Dany… I just worry.” He shifted in his chair, plucking a fountain pen from the cup on his desk and fiddling with it. “I worry that you are too driven… that you think this… project of yours is all that is left to fix this mess.”

“ _Mess?_ ” she scoffed loudly. “Rheagar, forgive me, but this is more than a mess father has left us. This is an _apocalyptic event_. Do you really think those fucking Walls are going to keep—“

 _”It is in everyone’s best interest,”_ he gritted out through clenched teeth. “The Dragon Unit Program is no longer tenable. We can’t keep up with the escalation of Walker Events.”

“You mean it’s in the _board’s_ best interest,” she spat, failing to keep the bitterness from her voice. “It’s in the bottom line’s best interest to throw up their hands and close down a project that nets them nothing but law suits and medical bills.“

“What do you want me to do, Dany?” Rhaegar burst, his steady hold on his Targaryen temper slipping. “We are in a war. The Dragon Units were the best shot we had… _for a time_. How were we supposed to know that prolonged exposure to the Drift could unravel a mind? That the shielding we built to encase the Wildfire turbines was shabby at best and pilots and engineers would come away with tumors in their bones?” 

He straightened from his chair and began pacing at the window. “Is this not what you want?” he asked her, voice a bit high-pitched as he gestured to the window, to the line of cranes and derricks churning away at the Wall on the horizon. “No cancer, no mental degradation… but people still die _every day_. Falling to their deaths because we’re working so fast we can’t install proper safety nets. But we _have_ to do it, Dany. What other choice do we have?”

Dany felt her rage and frustration break like water on rock seeing her brother standing before the blue glow of the window. She paused to truly look him over and she could see that he was haggard and sleepless. Dark hollows under his gray eyes, his white-blonde hair stringy and dull when normally it shone like silver thread. 

She sighed and stood from her chair, walking to meet him at the window. “You’re right, Rhaegar, I’m sorry.” 

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, his mouth a thin line. She took up his hand and watched as a crane swung an enormous block of stone to the top of the Wall. 

“I know that there was little to no time for study and safety… and that the men and women who stepped into those machines, either as pilots or engineers, I know that they accepted the risks for the good of humanity.” 

She turned more fully and his eyes were sad, but there was also the familiar light of love that Rhaegar always reserved just for her. “But I am simply looking for a better way.” She waved to the wall in the sea beyond. “The Walls won’t work. I think you know that, no matter how you deny it. Why else would you keep the Dragon Pit open? Why else would you ship any Dragon Units you could find here for repair?” She managed a watery little smile and squeezed his hand. “Why would you continue to let me do what I do?”

He let out a breath, long and slow, and nodded. “I know, Dany. I know. You know I just… worry.” He looked at her, eyes fond, the corners of his mouth twitching. 

“It’s one of the many things you excel at, brother,” she replied, eyes oddly heated. 

He gathered both her hands into his own, face growing solemn. “Just promise me one thing,” he murmured, “promise me that you won’t go out there.” He inclined his head towards the sea, where the monsters roamed. No longer whimsical illustrations on an old, faded map but terrifyingly real and terrifyingly lethal. 

She felt a lump form in her throat and tried to blink away her tears. “I promise.” 

+++

“Oi, White Wolf!” 

Jon turned from his work on the truss in front of him, suppressing his irritation at being referred to by his ‘tabloid’ name. His ever charming foreman stood a level below him, astonishingly cavalier about standing on an eight-inch wide piece of steel five hundred feet from the ground. “Got a visitor.”

Jon pushed up his visor with his thumb, frowning in confusion. “Shift’s not over for another hour.”

The foreman shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” 

Jon paused at that, locked in disbelief. Foremen were not exactly lenient when it came to work hours, often pushing workers to labor off the clock, but the man had trundled off, seemingly to go shout at some unsuspecting employee for sloppy welding or misuse of their rivet gun. 

He packed up his equipment and made for the elevator, wracking his brain for ideas as to who this mysterious visitor was. How in the hells did they find him? He had made very sure that it would be next to impossible for anyone to do just that. And then there was the question of the importance and seeming… authority of said visitor. Not just anyone could pull a Wall worker off their shift before it was over.

He lit up a cigarette as he stepped in the lift, brain buzzing. He could always finish a smoke in the long journey back to earth— sometimes two, if there were enough stops along the way. 

“ _Arya?_ ” Jon cried once he’d reached the ground floor. He stepped from the elevator and flicked the butt of his cigarette away. “What the hells are you doing here?” 

“Could say the same for you, Jon,” Arya countered kindly as they embraced. 

_Gods_ , it felt good to see her again. It had been at least two years or more… he couldn’t really remember. Last he’d heard from his little half-sister, she’d gone off to Braavos to ‘find her way’, after Robb had died. Jon hadn’t asked and couldn’t really blame her. He'd fled to the literal end of the world, after all. At least Braavos was warm. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Jon went on, taking her in with disbelieving eyes. 

She’d grown so much. Her dark, clever eyes were still the same. The playful quirk on her lips as familiar as ever. But she was also very different— lean and muscular, a scar just below her right eye. Her hair was short— half her head buzzed, the other half kept longish in a severe angle. She was dressed in what looked like military fatigues, though, evidently the army had updated in recent years as they looked nothing like what he remembered. 

He certainly _did_ remember the insignia sewn in red and blue thread on Arya’s jacket collar: a snarling dragon clutching a skull and crossbones in its fearsome claws. The insignia of a ranger of the Dragon Unit program. A symbol he never thought he’d see again, never _wanted_ to see again… much less emblazoned on the jacket of his little sister. 

He felt his skin go clammy, his breath speed up. “What the hells are you doing here?” he repeated again, more sternly, keeping his voice shockingly level. 

“There somewhere else we could talk?” she asked, shifting her eyes around. An empty construction yard wasn’t the most conducive setting for fruitful conversation, to be sure, but Jon’s apprehension only grew. 

Jon looked her up and down, cursing his cynicism. This was his little sister, for fuck’s sake. He cleared his throat, tried to get ahold of himself. “Uh, yeah. There’s a pub not too far from here. Should be quiet right about now.” 

She nodded, her smile tellingly forced. She was never much good at lying. That somehow put him more at ease. 

A walk to the highway and bus ride later, they were strolling into The Last Hearth Pub, a shitty little dive that deftly matched the… _quaint_ aesthetic of any ramshackle boomtown (this particular one inspiringly dubbed ‘Wall Town’). 

Lawless and slipshod, the so-called ‘town’ was nothing more than two dozen blocks of cheaply made concrete apartment blocks intersected with puckered and pockmarked roads that were lined with the tents and lean-tos of scabs eagerly awaiting the near-daily, newly-made job openings at the Wall. Sleezey gambling houses, brothels and pubs crammed in where they could, using the spaces between the apartment towers as their foundations. The whole charming ensemble was carpeted with gray, sludgy snow and various flotsam and jetsam. 

Jon led Arya through all this with a fresh burn of shame glowing in his belly. He’d become quite blind to it over the years, but what must his sister think of him living here?

They found a place at the near-empty bar, electing to keep their caps and coats on, as the place wasn’t heated… or at least not well. There were a few hardworking space heaters littered about, but the well-meaning bartender might as well have saved his electricity. 

“Edd,” Jon greeted as said bartender placed his usual whiskey down in front of him without preamble. 

“Snow,” Edd returned with a grin. He nodded to Arya. “Did you make a friend, Snow?” 

Jon snorted. “You sound surprised.”

“Ah, who doesn’t love the prickly, silent, ex-military type, eh?” 

“I’ll have a beer, thanks,” Arya interrupted the light grilling before Jon could shoot back. Edd nodded and trotted off, his years of keeping bar teaching him such simple graces as when to piss off when needed. 

Arya turned back to him, and this time his sister made no effort to hide the worry on her face. “How are you doing, Jon?”

He looked away and took a sip of his whisky, kissed his teeth and let out a long, slow breath. He looked back to her, this ghost from his much better past. A past he should have appreciated more. A past he wanted kept there. 

“Fine.”

She looked ready to punch him, but Edd returned with her beer and she nodded in thanks. She didn’t say anything, only looked at him in that way she used to. As if she were just daring him to lie to her again and see if it actually worked. Back when they were just kids and the only things he needed to lie about were wether or not he stole her secret stash of cereal. 

But that wasn’t who he was anymore. Who _they_ were anymore. 

“I live here,” he supplied simply after a moment under her knowing scrutiny. He waved a hand to the assembly of mismatched, heavily repaired chairs and tables on a packed dirt floor that had been poorly paved over with scrap planks. “Where this hellhole is the best pub in town. No offense, Edd.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Edd muttered from down the bar where he had retreated with a magazine to give them some semblance of privacy. Or the illusion of it, anyway.

“Everyday I go to work and there are crowds of men and women who cram into an office waiting to snatch up one of the positions that’s been vacated because some poor bastard _died._ ” He took another draw of his drink, his well-tended anger starting to prickle under his bones. “Imagine… being so hopeless and desperate that you come _here_ to wait in a fucking tent on the side of a frozen road for someone to die, so you can take their place? For what? An apartment? A pittance of money?” 

“That’s all some can hope for these days,” Arya replied coldly, spinning her bottle within forefinger and thumb on the tin-topped bar before taking a healthy swig. Jon had never seen such a thing in all his years: a bar top made of old soup cans. It would’ve be ingenious, really… if it wasn’t so fucking sad. 

“So I take it… that you aren’t doing so great, then?”

Jon snorted a laugh. “It’s not so bad. I have Ghost.” 

Her eyes softened at that. “I don’t know what I’d do without Nymeria.”

He nodded, warming a little at her understanding, however small. “I mean, I came here as a choice. So… I have no right to complain,” he clarified, waggling his empty tumbler at Edd who came over with the bottle to top him off. Edd was truly the best man in this shit town. “I couldn’t get here fast enough. Had to get away from… everything.” 

His sister nodded slowly, kissing her teeth as she breathed out a large sigh. “So here you are, at the edge of the world, just a few miles away from the very place you used to battle the monsters who threaten our survival, constructing the very thing that is supposed to save us all,” she drawled, leaning back as far as she dared in her rickety barstool. 

Jon blinked at her, not sure what this statement was meant to convey or what reaction she wished to draw from him. All he knew is that a coldness filled his chest that had nothing to do with the draft. 

He cleared his throat, pointed at the insignia on her lapel. “Why are you here?”

Arya raised her eyebrows. “You familiar with Daenerys Targaryen?”

“Is that a trick question?” he asked with a quirked brow. The only person more famous than Daenerys Targaryen in Westeros was maybe her brother, Rhaegar... and even then, it wasn’t by much. 

“She’s conducting a… study,” she landed on lamely. She shook her head. “I’m shit with this sort of stuff. Science and numbers and all the like. She can explain it a lot better than I can… but at any rate, she wants you to be a part of it… for some reason.“ She grinned slyly at him with her last words, and the good hearted jibe almost made him let his guard down. 

“Daenerys Targaryen sent you… to find me?” Jon repeated, at an absolute loss. “What the fuck does she want with _me_?”

Arya shook her head, licking her lips. “Probably the same thing she wants with me. But I don’t know.” 

He furrowed his brow, concern taking hold. What would Daenerys want with his little sister? “And what the hells does she want with you?”

She scoffed a bit, looking at him with vague hurt in her eyes. “Gee, bro, thanks.” She took another swig of her beer, draining it. “I am useful sometimes.” 

Jon blinked at her, nonplussed. 

She pulled a face, unsure of how to handle his silence. She nodded in gratitude as Edd brought her another beer. “She’s trying to save the Dragon Unit program.”

“No,” he interjected swiftly, voice cold and flat. 

She sighed, long and loud, as if she knew that was exactly what he would say. “Here we go.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She squared her shoulders, narrowing her dark eyes at him. “I’m going to have to fight you tooth and nail, huh? You don’t even know what she’s doing! She’s been researching the Drift, for fuck’s sake! She has all the—”

“I don’t give a shit, Arya,” he spat, resentment and pain and all the rest bubbling to the surface. “Let me tell you a few things... Targaryen Industries can fuck itself. They’re the reason we’re here, fighting fucking monsters like a crummy sci fi B-movie. They’re _also_ the reason why our fucking brother is dead.”

She swallowed, picking at the label of her beer with her thumbnail. Jon couldn’t quite tell if she was furious with him, or uncomfortable with this whole situation.

“And you say Daenerys is studying the fucking _Drift?_ ” he pressed, undaunted, as his sister shifted in her chair, cast her eyes around nervously. He was nearly shouting, and the few other patrons at the bar were beginning to stare. 

“Well, give her a message from me, would you?” he snarled, lowering his voice. “Tell her to stay very fucking far away. You can’t study the Drift. The Drift is unknowable, and all it will do is eat her up from the inside out.” He slammed back the rest of his drink, his skin hot and itchy under his coat, the space within his chest burning and turbid like boiling broth. 

Arya waited, like a trapper would give a thrashing coyote a moment to tire itself out before tripping the paddle to let it run free. “That’s exactly what she’s trying to _prevent,_ Jon. That’s why we need you.” 

“‘ _We_ ’ is it?” he retorted with a chuff of disbelief as he accepted another pour of whiskey. 

What the hells had happened in the years since he had seen her? The Arya he remembered was perhaps even more of a loner than he ever was, her trust for institutions and established authority nearly nonexistent. Now, here she was in army fatigues entreating him to reenter a service she herself had derided with as much vehemence as he had ever seen from her. 

“Yes, _we_ , Jon,” she countered sternly, “I’m as much a part of this as you were.” 

He rounded on her at that. “Don’t you _dare_ say that, Arya,” he growled. “You’re my sister and I love you, but don’t you dare say that. You were never in a Dragon. And you never will be. The Dragons are dead.” 

She chuckled at that, mirthless. “Tell that to Daenerys fucking Targaryen.” 

Jon felt his shoulders sag, something within him aching at the thought of seeing a Dragon again, of stepping into that cockpit. But it was a small, smoldering thing compared to the yawning void that was his dead brother, his copilot. 

“I came here to leave it all behind, Arya,” he said, voice quiet and strained. “I have no intentions of going back. Much less to step back in a Dragon or the fucking Drift… to be poked and prodded like a bug in Petri dish.”

“Aye,” she sighed, her body folding in on itself a bit. Jon felt a stab of remorse, having rebuked his sister so sternly, but there was just nothing else for it. 

She turned back to her beer, continuing to worry at the label. “I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you, Jon. Gods know I understand exactly how difficult that is.” She threw him a tiny, commiserate smile before she blew out a defeated breath. 

She looked up to the staticky TV displaying a soccer game in Dorne above the bar. “I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you that I know what you’ve been through. But I will say this: those monsters took our brother, and there is not one day that goes by where I’m not doing my best to make sure they all pay the price. And what Daenerys is trying to do is the same: to ensure that they all go to the bottom of the sea to rot. Forever.” 

Jon couldn’t help but laugh at that, the sound bitter and void of any sort of joy. Scientists and engineers and medical doctors and all the brightest from all around the world had been striving for years to formulate a ‘final solution’ so to speak… and not one of them had ever been able to come even close. Who the fuck did Daenerys Targaryen think she was to truly believe she’d done it? 

Pretty convenient, he thought coldly to himself, considering her family’s company was the reason for the this fucking mess in the first place. 

Arya turned her eyes back to him. They were bright and blazing with a familiar fire, a fire that Jon had been lacking for years. The same fire that had guttered out when Robb had died. 

“Now, tell me, Jon… do you think these fucking Walls are going to avenge our brother for us?”

The scars on his chest ached, his ears filled with the sudden sound of rushing water and the screams of his brother. 

He’d run away. Like a kicked dog, he’d fled with his tail tucked between his legs. 

He swallowed, feeling wretched and wounded. 

Ashamed.

Arya pulled out her wallet and flipped two bills onto the bar before straightening from her seat. “Here,” she said gently as she handed over a business card. “Just in case.” And with that, she was out the door.

‘ _Arya Stark_ ’ it read ‘ _Sargeant First Class, United Confederation Army, Dragon Pit Base, Westeros’._ Inscribed below it was a phone number. 

He tucked it into his own wallet, a flame of pride flaring up within him despite all his misgivings.

It wasn’t until a few days later, while he languished on his threadbare sofa after another too-long shift, half dozing and mostly drunk with Ghost curled beside him, that he finally made a decision.

He stumbled up from the couch, going to his phone that was charging in his bedroom. Ghost followed behind, ever curious. 

_“The Walker is being registered as an unprecedented Class 5,”_ the news anchor recited calmly from the TV in the living room. _“Authorities were not available for questioning, but according to video footage directly from Braavosi coast guard officials, the Walker was able to breach the Ragman’s Harbor Wall in less than a half an hour.”_

+++

Dany straightened her jacket, tried to keep her hair from her face in vain. Even with it coiled in a tight braid, the whipping wind of the helicopter’s blades unraveled it in quick measure. 

She adjusted her grip on the umbrella— another vain protection from the deluge that surrounded her as rain lashed out from the propellors. She blinked against the harsh mist, her heart pounding in her chest. 

“Nervous?” Tyrion quipped from beside her. 

“Shut up,” she muttered. She _was_ nervous, for some reason. Most would be, meeting the legendary White Wolf of what was now considered long-ago legend (in 24-hour news cycle years), but she was nervous for an entirely different reason she didn’t really know how to wrangle with at present. 

The helicopter touched down, a bit roughly for her liking in the roaring winds. Probably should’ve grounded all flights, considering, but Jorah Mormont was the best pilot in Westeros. 

After a moment the door slid open and something she did not expect happened— an enormous white dog leapt from the aircraft. 

“He has a fucking dog?” Missy inquired from her other side. 

“It would seem so,” Tyrion answered for Dany in wake of her dumbfounded silence. 

Jon Snow came next, wrapped in a puffy bomber jacket and looking windswept and grumpy and maybe even a bit green around the gills. Dany felt a twinge of sympathy, having endured her fair share of choppy helicopter rides. 

“Ranger Snow,” Dany greeted with his military rank, as proper, nearly shouting over the noise of wind and helicopter rotors. She held out her hand and he took it a bit stiffly, already thoroughly soaked. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m Daenerys Targaryen.” 

“Aye, nice to meet you,” he returned, loud and awkward. “There somewhere else we could do this, Miss Targaryen?” 

“Yes, of course,” she shouted back, forcing a smile as she led them away from the landing pad and into the relative safety of the main machine bay. 

Once over the threshold, she turned and slammed the button that controlled the massive bay doors. They came lurching from their resting spots and shuddered closed with a ‘clang’. 

The sudden change in noise level was almost deafening, only the ambient rumble of air conditioning compressors the size of houses, the whirr of enormous fans and the buzz of fluorescent lamps hanging from the multi-storied high ceiling filled the space now. 

“Welcome to the Dragon Pit, Ranger Snow,” Daenerys called to him. He had wandered to near the middle of the cavernous space, his head on a swivel, neck craned back in an effort to take it all in. 

“It’s… ah, it’s quite impressive, Miss Targaryen.” 

“Thank you,” she replied with her most winning smile. “We are most pleased that you will be joining us in this endeavor, Ranger Snow.” 

She couldn’t help but be pleased. The place had been near to decrepit before she had gotten her hands on it two years ago. The crown jewel of the Dragon Unit Project, gone to rot. There were still areas of improvement, to be sure, but the place was mostly back to its former glory and then some. 

Jon Snow looked back to her and she told herself the chill that went through her was simply the unfortunate circumstance of standing in an air-conditioned warehouse in a rain-soaked coat. That the goosebumps were simply from her damp hair and the draft from the fans. 

He trotted back to her, rejoining their little group, his silent and seemingly well behaved companion right by his side. There were lines of faint annoyance deepening around his eyes as he waited for her to get on with it, shifting his bag on his shoulder. Even drenched and wind-tossed and dripping onto the polished concrete floor, he was… striking. Dark eyes and full mouth and longish black hair gleaming and plastered to his neck like kelp. 

But, just like the photo in the file she had pored over for days, he looked worn around the edges. 

“This is Missandei, head programmer and statistician,” Dany said with a wave to the woman in question. Jon nodded to her and shook her hand with an applied smile, no evidence of shock on his face that someone so young or of her gender would have such a position. 

“And this is Tyrion Lannister, VP of Dragon Operations,” she went on. 

“It’s been awhile, Snow,” Tyrion greeted as the two shook hands. 

“It has,” Jon returned. 

“I did not know that you two knew each other,” Dany cut in, a bit annoyed that Tyrion had failed to mention this fairly important detail sooner. 

Tyrion nodded. “Jaime and Cersei went to Hard Home Base for some Dragon Unit demonstration or another… I tagged along. Ranger Snow here was the only one I could find that had a sense of humor.” 

“Aye, you mean I was the only one who didn’t talk much.” 

Tyrion inclined his head. “I do love the sound of my own voice.” 

“Well,” Dany began abruptly, stowing away her annoyance with her VP for another time, “I’m sure that you’d like to get out of those wet clothes, Ranger—“ She stopped short, a bit mortified. 

Fuck.

He lifted his eyebrows at her. 

“Um… so, I’ll just show you where you’ll be staying. So you can…” She cleared her throat and began walking without anymore ado. 

They turned down a corridor, then up a set of stairs. Down another corridor and over a cat walk. Down another set of stairs. 

“Bit of a maze,” he observed from behind her. 

She smiled at him from over her shoulder, his Northern burr strange but pleasant… swallowing up entire words like the ‘it’s’ she presumed lived in that sentence. “The consequences of poor planning and many logistical nightmares. You’ll get used to it.” 

She stopped, noticing that he had fallen behind by some paces, gazing out of one of the observation windows that looked over Bay 9. 

She drew level with him, taking in what had drawn his attention so acutely. Balerion, black and cold under a shower of sparks, the cowl and visor of his mask making for a fierce, scowling visage. 

“Didn’t think there were any Mach 3s left,” Jon said quietly, maybe a bit astounded. 

“There weren’t,” she returned, crossing her arms.

He inclined his head to the machine they were observing. “That the Black Dread?” 

Dany nodded, her hands going a bit clammy. “Balerion,” she clarified. 

He said nothing, knowing the rest of the story, as she would’ve assumed. Balerion had the most kills of any Dragon Unit and was also the only one that had boasted a solo pilot. 

Her brother, Viserys Targaryen, now a prisoner in his own mind, languishing in a state hospital just a few miles south of here. 

“We’re retrofitting it for a dual pilot system,” Dany explained, the silence thickening. “Should’ve never had a solo pilot Unit… the neural load…” She trailed off, shaking her head. 

Jon turned more fully toward her, his eyes narrowing. “What is it that you’re trying to do here, Miss Targaryen?” 

“You can call me Daenerys,” she told him instead. 

He nodded. “What is it that you’re trying to do here, Daenerys?” 

Something about the timbre of his voice turned her name into something of a caress that she did not care for at this juncture. “I am sorry, Ranger Snow—“

“You can call me Jon.”

She looked at him flatly. “I am sorry, Jon, that you were not properly debriefed before you arrived.” She folded her hands in front of her. “Although you are half siblings, it seems as though you and Sergeant Stark both possess a certain talent for reticence.” 

He huffed out a breath, something like amusement behind it. Dany turned more fully to him, spine straightening. “But tell me… if you were not sure of what we were doing here… why did you agree to come?” 

Jon had been slouched upon the handrail, just a bit too smug for her liking, but at her words he stood straighter and coughed, shifting his bag on his shoulder. His dog whined at his elbow, sensing his owner’s stress, no doubt. 

They were silent for a moment, both taking in the other. From the moment Jon Snow had stepped from the helicopter, Dany had sensed some sort of shapeless animosity hanging over his head that seemed to be focused squarely upon her. It was a phenomenon she was well attuned to recognizing when meeting new people— her family had made many, many enemies over the years.

She was also well practiced in dissipating that same, amorphous enmity. 

“Sergeant Stark told me that it took a matter of days before you called her up,” she prodded. “She never said as much, but I couldn’t help but note that she called me with news just hours after the Braavosi Wall breach.” 

Jon shifted on his feet, tucked his hands in his pockets. She took a step closer to him, and she could just smell the faint, clean scent of ozone still clinging to his skin. 

“I’m here because the Walls won’t work, and I think that’s why you’re here, too,” she said firmly before she stepped back from him, turning to continue down the hall. 

“Daenerys.” 

The word had a trail of heat left behind it, like the tail of a comet, and it caught her like he’d laid down a trip wire. She turned back to him and the look on his face struck her like a blow. 

“I’m here because you and I, and now everyone else in the world, knows that the Walls don’t work, but that isn’t the only reason I’m here… and I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining what those reasons are.” 

She felt a flush of heat… not only at the compliment, but at her sudden understanding. Jon Snow of all people would possess a healthy thirst for revenge after what had happened to him. And even, perhaps, a morbid curiosity. In all the trash tabloids, the White Wolf had always been portrayed as the loose cannon, the one with a predilection for risky maneuvers and foolhardy bravery. It was the reason why he had been just as famous as his brother, despite his shy, guarded nature. 

He waved to the window beside them. “For all anyone knows, the Dragons are dead… but here you are, in some secret lair repairing old Mach 3s and studying the _Drift_ of all things. Don’t insult my intelligence by not telling me _your_ reasons.” 

She swallowed, shifting straighter, hands coming together in front of her once again. “Do you know why the Dragon Unit Project declined as it did, Ranger— Jon?” she amended. 

His brows folded in consternation and he licked his lower lip. Dany really wished he wouldn’t. Her eyes tracked the motion like they were drawn on a lead. 

“Is this some sort of trick?” he asked hotly and Dany blinked at him, nonplussed. He leaned back from her, as if affronted, tucking his hands back in his pockets. “Because _your brother_ pulled the plug. Because it was costing _your company_ too much money.” 

“It eventually became a money issue, true, but it did not start that way,” she conceded. She turned away from him again, inclining her head toward the direction they had come. She had wet clothes on, too, and was impatient to get out of them. She could walk and talk. 

Jon got the idea and followed her lead. “What really doomed the Dragon Project was a lack of pilots.” She paused at a door and scanned her security key. She waggled it over her shoulder at him. “Will have to get you one of these.” 

They continued on, Jon drawing more level with her, his interest obviously piqued. “In the beginning, pilots were almost always blood related— siblings, parents and children, even cousins or otherwise. That’s how they entered the Drift together— with that ready-made, in-born connection that was so hard to measure and attain.”

“Drift compatibility,” Jon supplied.

Dany inclined her head, pleased. “Exactly.”

“I never really thought of that.” 

“Yes, well, that sort of condition of Drift compatibility severely narrows your prospective recruits.” She shrugged, scanning her security key again at the entrance to the barracks. “Then you have the added complication of parents aging out, copilots dying and the others left behind not able to—“ She stopped, glancing over and noticing the rather sickened expression on his face. She swallowed, cursing herself before continuing. “Anyway… after a few years, we were having a hell of a time finding suitable candidates.” 

Jon nodded, his previously aggrieved face softening in understanding. Dany inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. She knew that she’d have to walk on eggshells, so to speak, with him, considering all the baggage he brought along with him (that she would never, _ever_ blame him for). It was just that… Dany was definitely _not_ a ‘walk on eggshells’ type. 

“The biggest part of the problem was the fact that we didn’t really know what the Drift _was_. What made it tick. What made two people so-called ‘Drift compatible’.” 

“Makes sense,” Jon said, shaking his head, “the Drift is a fucking mystery.” 

“Indeed,” Dany returned, oddly charmed by his vulgarity. “So, for the past few years, I have put together a set of metrics and trials meant to… measure a recruit’s… so-called ‘vital’ characteristics,” she explained, finger quotes and all. They slowed to a stop before the door to what would be his quarters. She scanned her key and the door slid open with a quiet ‘hiss’. 

Jon poked his head in and had a look around, but did not make to step in just yet. “Ghost,” he said to his eerily silent dog with a click of his tongue. Dany almost jumped in surprise, nearly forgetting that the dog had been with them this whole time. Ghost trotted into the room, sniffing every nook and cranny. 

Jon looked back at her, eyes sharp and bright with something she could only hope was curiosity. “So… you mean to use these metrics to match people up… to find people who are Drift compatible who aren’t… _prepackaged_ that way due to blood.” 

She nodded, biting back a satisfied smile, delighted that he had caught on so quickly. “It’s the only way we can hope to keep the Dragon Units with pilots for the foreseeable future.” 

He narrowed his eyes at her, all his previous innocent inquisitiveness gone… as if he just _knew_ she had something else hidden in her motives. “Why me?”

“What?” 

“You’ve brought in people from all over the world… you’ve been testing and retesting your system, training these people for years, Arya tells me. But you came specifically for me… some washed up old timer of no use to anyone anymore. Why?” 

She looked down at her hands, fiddled with her security key, searching for the best way to explain this to him without… overwhelming him. 

“Because you are exceptional, Jon,” was what she landed on, because it was the simplest form of the truth. 

He flushed at this, looking away from her in hopelessly charming bashfulness. She quirked a tiny smile. “You may think yourself some washed up old timer, but you are not. You were one of the best Dragon pilots for a long, long time. You came out the other side of a terrible tragedy leagues better than most of your peers. You are one of the few here who have piloted a Mach 3, who have spent as much time in the Drift as you have.”

Jon seemed humbled beyond belief, but also deeply skeptical, shuffling on his feet and peering down the hall as if some mystical soothsayer would appear around the corner to answer all his doubts. She wondered if he was always this cautious, or if his hesitation lay with the fact that she was a Targaryen— member of the family that had caused him so much pain. 

“We can talk more at dinner, Jon, but for now I’ll leave you to unpack and get comfortable,” she said after a beat of silence. “I’ll send Tyrion by with your security key and other things you’ll need. He can show you to the mess, where you’ll take your meals.” 

He nodded and stepped into his room. “Uh… thank you, Daenerys.” 

She smiled. “Until later, Ranger.” 

+++

The mess was crowded and cacophonous. 

Ghost nudged his elbow, sensing Jon’s unease. He looked down at him, adjusting the grip on his plastic lunch tray so he could scratch his faithful friend behind the ears. Thank the gods for Ghost. He wasn’t so sure he could do this without him.

He took a steadying breath and scanned the crowd for Arya— or anyone, for that matter. His sister had told him that many others he might know had joined the cause, though she wouldn’t say who. _“Gonna have to come and find out for yourself, Ranger.”_

As he walked through the hall, he couldn’t help but think of the first day of Basic. Strolling into a mess hall not much different than this one with Robb by his side. Just fucking piss and vinegar kids, really, with grand yearnings and a sense of invincibility that only came from the foolishness of youth. 

He’d been so confident then. So sure of himself and his purpose. 

Of his copilot. 

He was not that boy any longer… far from it, but he had to admit (however begrudgingly), that some of his initial fears and doubts had been put to rest by Daenerys. 

He had thought about their albeit brief conversation the whole time he had unpacked his meager belongings in his new room. Had thought about _her_ , damn it all. He found himself annoyingly and continually distracted by the purpose and drive that imbued every word she spoke as she had she explained her work to him. Her confidence, her passion, how fucking _smart_ she was…

It certainly didn’t help that she was as beautiful as she was. 

Jon, fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, had had at least some inkling to her beauty before meeting her in the flesh. He had seen her a few times here and there on TV, running interference for whatever new disaster had turned up in the press due to her father’s fumbling. 

But, even with those admittedly manufactured images to guide him, seeing her deftly navigate a machine bay instead of some dolt of a talk show host, expounding on Drift metrics and compatibility… it had been a bit overwhelming to say the least. 

“Jon!” 

He snapped his eyes to his left, seeing Arya standing next to a table, waving her arm over her head to get his attention. He smiled and started toward her, just about to take a seat when he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Jon Snow!” a great, booming voice greeted him. 

“Tormund?” Jon returned breathlessly, placing his tray down on the table to circle around and hug his long lost friend. “What in the hells are you doing here?” 

“Ah, same as you I’d wager,” Tormund replied with a grin as he released him from his bone-crushing embrace. “Here to kill some bloody Walkers.” 

Jon shook his head, not quite understanding, but elated to see his old friend all the same. The last time he had seen Tormund Giantsbane, he’d been four drinks in at the pub, cursing the Targaryen name for all but eliminating his helicopter corps in another round of budget cuts, four years ago now. 

“You mean dropping in Dragon Units to kill some bloody Walkers?” Jon asked as he walked back to the other side of the table and took a seat next to Arya. 

Tormund threw his head back and guffawed so loudly a few people at the table behind him halted their conversations to give him an annoyed look. 

_At least some things never change,_ Jon thought to himself. 

“No, little crow,” he answered with a shake of his head. Jon inwardly winced at the peculiar nickname his friend had dubbed him with. Something about ‘wearing black all the fucking time’. Tormund pierced his roast beef with a fork and waved it in front of him as if for emphasis. “I’m going to be a Dragon rider.” With that, he took an enormous bite, no more to say for himself.

Jon blinked, still a bit lost, and looked to Arya. “What the bloody hells is he talking about?”

Arya swallowed down her bit of food. She raised her eyebrows and nodded to Tormund. “That’s why we’re all here, Jon. Finding copilots. Getting into Dragon Units.” 

He looked down at his tray of food, the greasy peas and the grayish roast beef covered in a thin gravy. He felt stupid, now. _Of course_ that’s why they were here. That’s why _he_ was here… wasn’t it?

Gods… getting into a Dragon again. Finding a _copilot_. The thought was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. 

“Aye,” Tormund agreed, pointing his fork at him, “and now that _you’re_ here, Snow, we can finally get this show on the road.” 

Jon’s brows stitched together at that. “What do you mean?” He looked from his sister back to Tormund. “‘Now that I’m here’? What difference does that make?”

Tormund picked at his teeth. “Didn’t the Dragon Queen tell you?” 

“Dragon Queen?” Jon asked. 

“It’s what people call her,” Arya answered him with a shrug. “She saved the Dragons. It’s kind of… her thing.” She sighed, placing her fork down before turning to face Jon more fully, arms crossed on the table. “But seriously. Didn’t she tell you?” She shared a concerned look with Tormund that Jon definitely did not miss. “Because we sure in the hells don’t know.” 

He looked away from her, eyes far away, turning him and Daenerys’ earlier conversation over his in head once again. “Yes and no,” he replied, rapping a knuckle on the table. “She told me that I was…” he trailed off, thinking of the very mortifying word she had used to describe him.

_Exceptional._

“Anyway,” Arya went on with a sniff, oblivious to his sudden attack of muteness, “the final trials will start in the next few days. We can all start finding and training with hand-picked candidates for copilots, after you’ve gone through the intake process.” 

He held up a hand, frowning, his head spinning a bit. “Wait a sec… how long have you two been here?” 

“Three months,” Tormund offered.

“Almost a year,” Arya answered. 

“And you haven’t… found copilots yet?” Jon asked, dumbfounded. Wasn’t that the whole point of being here? To find a copilot? Why was it taking so bloody long? 

Arya shook her head. “Some who’ve come here already have their copilots.” She pointed down the hall. Jon craned his neck, before spotting the unmistakable golden heads of Jaime and Cersei fucking Lannister sitting a bench at the other end of the room. 

“Fucking hells, the Lannister twins are here?” 

Arya nodded before pointing in the opposite direction. “And there’s Yara and Theon Greyjoy.” 

“Holy shit,” Jon whispered. He remembered hearing about them, scrapping it out at the Iron Islands Outpost with the grimiest of the grimy in the Project. They had some big black beast of a Mach 4— lovingly dubbed ‘The Kraken’. 

“Who else is here?” 

Arya’s mouth drew into a little, pleased smile. “Bran.”

“ _Bran_ is here?” Jon nearly choked. “Surely he doesn’t want to be a pilot?” Bran was his second youngest half-brother. Jon loved him, of course, but he was odd and bookish and definitely did not strike Jon as a warrior, his… condition notwithstanding. 

Arya laughed, shaking her head. “No, no… he’s here doing scientific study. He’s studying the Walkers. Trying to find out what makes them… tick, I guess. Bloody hells if I know.” 

“Holy shit,” Jon whispered, yet again, not really knowing what else to say. Reality was truly settling in now. This… whatever this was that Daenerys was doing— it was very, very fucking substantial and he couldn’t help but feel a bit foolish. 

Even when he had called up Arya a week ago to tell her he was coming, his annoyingly persistent cynicism had kept him from truly believing that this would mean anything, that this would _do_ anything. He was just here so he wouldn’t be in that hellhole shanty town anymore, waiting for a Walker to burst through the wall he had risked his life to build to come snatch him up from his shitty apartment, alone and helpless. 

“There are others who have copilots, but for most of us…” Arya’s voice filtered back in through his flurry of thoughts, his weirdly rising panic. His eyes slid back to her, his focus retuning somewhat. “Daenerys is still trying to work out the kinks, doesn’t want us rushing into anything that might be too dangerous until then.” She nodded to him. “That’s where you come in.”

“Me?” he protested. “Why the hells would that matter?”

Arya shrugged, throughly unconcerned, much to his dismay and great annoyance. 

“Well, why don’t you ask her for yourself?” Tormund asked him thickly through a bite of yeast roll. “She’s right over there.” 

Jon turned towards where his friend had nodded, and saw Daenerys walking down the row of tables with the woman he had met earlier that day— Missandei, he thought her name was. 

His seething anger and confusion almost broke at the sight of her— silver hair tied back in a sleek ponytail, her sodden business attire discarded for her evening meal in favor of a black jumpsuit and work boots. She looked entirely at ease and in her element, instead of sticking out like a sore thumb as Jon would’ve assumed. She was a member of Westeros’ most high profile family— practically royalty. And yet, here she was, taking her meals in a mess hall with all the other grunts, looking ready to start a shift at the steel mill, for fucks sake.

And she looked damn good, to boot. 

Jon cursed himself, inwardly telling his dumb, lizard brain to shut the fuck up before rising from his seat to walk toward her. 

“Jon,” she greeted, her smile a bit applied, obviously not thrilled to be interrupted before her dinner had even really began— although she _had_ offered to talk earlier, Jon recalled. “Everything okay? How do you like your room?” 

She looked to Ghost, who had trotted up beside him in curiosity… and maybe a bit of concern, too. His dog was keenly attuned to Jon’s moods, and he was well rankled right now. “And how is your buddy here adjusting?” she asked Ghost with a smile, her voice turning goofy, in that way that humans always seemed to talk to animals.

It would’ve been cute, if he wasn’t so mad. 

“We need to talk.”

Dany blinked at him. “Okay,” she replied tonelessly, obviously thrown by his curtness. She waved a hand to an empty table. “Want to have a seat?” 

He shook his head, ignoring her offer. Missandei looked between the both of them, perturbed. 

“Why am I here?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level.

“Well… I told you—“

“Arya just told me that she and everyone else can find copilots now that I’m here.” He indicated his sister, still sitting a the bench some ways behind them. She was presently glaring at him murderously for, presumably, implicating her in all this mess. “Isn’t that the whole point of all this? Why don’t these people have copilots by now? What does that have to do with _me_?” 

Daenerys closed her eyes, her shoulders sagging, the universal response of a person found out. Jon couldn’t help the little twist of sick satisfaction in his chest. 

She opened her eyes, pinning him with a sharp look. “Can we make a deal?” 

Jon simply stared, confused, not expecting this reaction in the least. “A deal?”

“We can eat our dinners in peace, and then you can meet me after and we can talk, okay?” 

He bit his lip, impatient for some real fucking answers, but also not wanting to come off as a _complete_ asshole. He nodded. “Yeah, sure.” He huffed out a frustrated breath, reaching down to stroke Ghost’s velveteen ears for good measure. “Where do you want to meet?”

“There’s a training room… for sparring,” she answered, pointing a thumb over her shoulder towards the mess hall exit. “It’s right across the hall from here. Let’s meet there. In let’s say… one hour?”

A… sparring room? What the fuck? 

Before he could ask her why the hells she would want to meet him there instead of her office or pretty much _anywhere_ else, she glanced down at his dog, hovering at his elbow. “I’d suggest leaving Ghost in your dormitory.” And then she was walking away from him to find a seat very far away from where he was situated. 

He watched her go, all of his doubt and unease, previously soothed by her and her clever words, now stirred up again by the very same hand.

He sighed and returned to his table. 

+++

“Take your shoes off.”

Jon just stared at her, hands stuffed in his hoodie. “What?”

Dany nodded to him, flipping on one row of the harsh fluorescent lights. “Take your shoes off, and your jacket.” She went about toeing her own shoes off, placing them neatly by the door. “Shoes aren’t allowed on the sparring floor.”

His eyes darted from her, swept the whole of the room as if searching for someone in the shadows to jump out and shout ‘ _surprise!’_ , before landing back on her again. 

“What are we doing?” 

She unzipped her jumpsuit, watched as his eyes tracked the motion before darting away when she stepped out of it. As if she needed privacy— she was wearing a tank and yoga pants underneath. 

She walked past him and plucked a quarter staff from the rack on the wall and tossed it to him. Despite having his hands shoved in his pockets, he was able to catch it before it careened right into his pretty face. 

“Nice reflexes,” she observed before taking a staff for herself. She spun it in her hand experimentally and turned back to him, still standing dumbly in the middle of the room, blinking at her as if she were some apparition. 

Finally, he relented with a disbelieving huff and a shake of his head. He trotted back to the door and began removing his shoes and jacket and Dany tried not to admire how his shoulders looked under his thin black tee. 

He spun the staff in his hand as he walked back towards her. “We don’t have a ref,” he pointed out. 

“Plan on fighting dirty, Ranger?” 

She could’ve sworn she saw him _blush_ , but she couldn’t be sure before he was tapping his staff to hers and they were shifting into fight positions. 

Quarter staff training had been something of a lost art before the advent of Dragon Unit battle. With modern warfare being waged almost entirely remotely, hand to hand combat— especially with a weapon— was hardly emphasized anymore. As a result, it was often taught last minute and haphazardly as a last-ditch effort sort of thing. Nowadays, however, with the close-quarters combat style of Walker versus Dragon more reminiscent of medieval combat, complete with sword and shield, training like this had seen a resurgence. 

It was the first metric on her litany of trials, and one of the few that she had yet to confirm with any degree of certainty when it came to Jon Snow.

“Ready?” she asked him. 

He nodded, and they both lunged forward at the same time. 

He was so fucking _fast_ it was like trying to swat a gnat out of the air with a string of dental floss. At least at first. She was fast, too, had been training in secret for years. 

“One,” he declared with a little smirk as he rapped her on her upper arm. 

_That’s cute._

She spun, taking him by surprise as she lunged low with her foot and hooked her ankle over his own. He brought his staff down, and his forward momentum with it. Silly, she thought. She took her staff in both hands and pushed. 

“One,” she said silkily, brandishing the end of her staff in his face as he lay stunned and breathless on the floor. 

Dany allowed him to scramble to his feet and she couldn’t help the little swoop in her belly at the tiny, pleased grin on his face. “Ready to give up, Ranger?”

He assumed his stance again and waited.

They spun and twirled in the odd half-light, the only sound the clack of their staffs and the huffing of their breath. 

“Two.” He got her with a dreadfully clever spin and thrust that she would have to ask him to teach her after she was done seeking vengeance for it. 

“Two.” She got him this time, with a kick-bounce of her staff so that it was wedged neatly under his chin. 

And so it went, matching blow for blow, until they counted to ’six’. Most of these spars were over at four, she realized as they finally stopped and bowed to each other, neither one emerging the victor. 

They were sweaty and panting and both pushed their backs to the cold, painted, cinder block wall, gathering their breath for a time until they sunk to the floor. Dany let out a little laugh, just a bit elated. 

She hadn’t felt that good in years.

Jon passed her a towel from the little shelf beside him before grabbing one for himself and blotting at his face and neck with it. She tried not to stare, his veins still throbbing with the exertion of their fight under his pale skin, the sweat gleaming on his strained muscles. 

“I thought you said you were a washed up old timer,” she quipped, letting her head fall back to the wall. The cool brick felt nice on her scalp. 

He laughed through his panting. “Sparring keeps you distracted.” 

She didn’t have to ask why he would be seeking distraction. She felt herself soften as she kicked her bare foot into his own companionably. “You did great.” 

His mouth twitched, shrugging. Was he always this bashful? It was annoyingly cute. “Helps when you have a good partner.”

She couldn’t help her blush at that, something odd and exhilarating flaring in her chest. 

They had been so in synch… barely a hit had actually landed. It was as if they had been training together for years. 

All of her study, her metrics, her training and careful calculations and everything else… it had all led to this. She was all but certain, now. 

“Daenerys,” he began, his breathing having leveled out somewhat. She looked over at him and he had turned his head towards her, also against the wall, hands hanging over his folded knees. She could read the question in his eyes as easily as if he had spoken it aloud. 

She looked down at her hands, gathering herself, realizing that there was no more avoiding it. “I think we might be Drift compatible.” 

Jon turned his face away, a tiny, cruel smile on his face as he let out a bitter huff. 

“Do you not think so? After that?” she countered hotly, gesturing to the sparring floor. “When was the last time—“ 

“How could you possibly know something like that?” he cut across her, that skeptical line between his brows again. “Just from a simple fight?” 

She lifted her back from the wall, turning towards him, legs folded under her. “Firstly, that was not just a simple _fight_ and I think you know that.” She scooted a bit closer to him, trying to ignore the heat radiating from his body, like an engine cooling after a long run. “And second, have you forgotten what I’ve been doing all these years?” 

He shook his head, still reluctant. “The Drift isn’t… _measurable_ , Daenerys,” he insisted, looking back to her with a strange light in his dark eyes— as if he _wanted_ to believe her, but just _couldn’t_. “It’s not something you can _know._ ”

“You don’t know that,” Dany argued, trying to keep her anger in check as she shook her head. “You don’t know what I’ve been able to discover… to _learn_.”

He hung his head, looking defeated, as if he kew it was useless to fight her any longer. “Okay, okay,” he conceded, throwing his hands out and frowning, lost in thought. “Let’s just nsay that is true. Is that why you brought me here… to confirm a… theory?” 

She swallowed, looking down at her hands, and nodded. She felt a welter of shame building up in her belly, her eyes burn with guilt. “Jon… I should’ve told you from the start, I’m sorry.”

She could see the muscles in his jaw working, his eyes focused on the floor with an intensity that could’ve burned a hole straight through the mat. He laughed, the sound cold and knowing, shaking his head. 

Her discomfort grew heavier, more cumbersome, and she licked her lips. “Will you let me… explain it to you? Fully?” 

He glanced over at her, the light of disappointment in his eyes nearly striking all the air from her lungs. He nodded, just barely.

She swallowed, gathered her thoughts. All her postulations and theories, all the very same things she had told herself all these years. 

“I know that it’s my family’s fault for all of this,” she began shakily, curling her arms over the tops of her knees. “I’m sorry, Jon, for everything that has happened to you because of it.” She paused at his sharp intake of breath, watching as the lines in his face seemed to deepen, his mouth downturned. “And that’s why I’ve taken up this work,” she went on in earnest, “so I can try to fix it… but I also want to do more, Jon. I want to _fight._ ” 

He swallowed, nodding, his eyes mercifully understanding. 

“This project is about getting the Dragon Units back out there, yes, and it’s about saving the world and putting this Walker shit to rest, yes, but it’s also a selfish thing that I’m doing. Sifting through the droves of candidates, comparing metrics and stats and all that shit for years until I could…” _Find a target_ , is what she should say, if she were being brutally honest, but she trailed off, not really knowing how to put it without sounding entirely fucked up. 

But maybe that’s just what she was: fucked up. 

She shook her head, laughing weakly. “Wow.”

Jon simply looked at her, as if he knew exactly what she had just realized. That he had been an unwitting and non consenting topic in research that would be considered odd at best and invasive at worst and she had done absolutely nothing to stop it.

“The… info you got on me,” he began haltingly, as if he were speaking against his better judgment. “‘Suppose it was public record?”

She nodded.

 _No hard feelings,_ his face seemed to say as he nodded back. His data was out there, recorded and preserved with all the rigor of governmental and corporate bureaucracy. He’d surrendered his right to privacy years ago, when he first stepped foot into Basic. He couldn’t be mad at her about that, though he could still be mad about many other things.

She was oddly touched. 

There was a long silence before Jon lifted his back from the wall so that she was sat somewhat behind him. He rolled his shoulders, tossed his head from side to side as if working out a kink in his neck. 

“How sure are you of this?” 

She lifted her eyebrows, taken aback, heart fluttering a bit as she thought of how fucking good it felt out there with him on the sparring floor. She’d been as certain as any researcher could be, before, but now… her certitude was newly rooted in a deeper, more unavoidable way. 

“Pretty fucking sure,” she replied emphatically. All those metrics and measures, her years of work and study, applied in theory, now all but perfectly aligned with the man in front of her. “Won’t be sure until we…”

“Drift,” he finished for her. 

She nodded, feeling a sudden squirm in her belly. All these years, the Drift had been the object of her study— a focus, a specimen… nothing more. Her mission to find a copilot and get out there had been so pin-line narrow… she had never really considered how _intimate_ Drifting with someone was… could be. 

It was the reason they had done all this research in the first place— you couldn’t just throw any two people in the Drift together, cross your fingers and hope everyone came out unscathed on the other side. Even under the most controlled environments, with all her precautions and careful measurements in place, shit could still go very wrong. 

She swallowed, feeling ill all of a sudden.

“Look, Jon, I understand if you don’t want to do it,” she began, thoroughly disgusted with herself, now. “But, you have to know that I haven’t initiated the other recruits yet because I won’t put them through something I won’t do myself. This whole thing… as much faith I have in it, I’m not going to make them the guinea pigs.”

“But you’ll do it with me.” 

It wasn’t a question, it was an observation, and that somehow made her feel worse. She deflated, sagging her shoulders back against the wall, her sweat sticky and cold against the painted bricks. 

He angled his face over his shoulder at her. There it was again— that flare of disappointment. It almost crushed her. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She bit her lip, shaking her head as the answers drifted up in her brain, each one sounding more pathetic and selfish than the last. 

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.” He simply looked at her, seeing straight through her, somehow. She sighed, defeated, inwardly wondering why she insisted on not telling him the whole truth. “My brother doesn’t want me in a Dragon,” she admitted heavily. “I couldn’t tell him the exact reason I wanted to recruit you, so, he couldn’t tell your sister… and here we are.” 

“Mm,” was his response, as if that was exactly what he had expected. He turned his face away from her and she sat sullenly in his shadow, fiddling with her sleeve, feeling like a cork bobbing a mill pond— not sure where to go from here. 

“So, we’d have to keep this… a secret,” he began after a prolonged pause. “If this happens and we go through with it.” 

She wished her heart wouldn’t speed up like that— as if he were speaking anymore than hypothetically. He turned back to look at her in wake of her silence and she nodded. 

“What happens if I refuse?” 

The question rocked her, oddly. It was something she should have perhaps better prepared for, because presently it gnawing a hole in her belly, thinking about having to watch him go.

But he did not look angry as he waited for her answer. Or even anticipatory, like he couldn’t wait to hear her response so he could act on it as soon as he fucking could… so he could get the fuck out of here and away from her crazy ass. 

“You’d be free to go.” She was quite proud of how level her voice was. “We’d, of course, make sure you got your job back at the Wall—“

He scoffed at that, loud and derisive. “I meant,” he pressed, “what happens to _you_ if I refuse?” He twirled his finger in the air, indicating the space at large. “What happens to this?”

She blinked at him, taken aback. “Well… I’d have to find a new candidate.”

He nodded, running his hand over his beard. It was a very distracting gesture, for some reason. “You don’t have any… runner ups?”

She found she couldn’t really form words, the answer to this question so shockingly embarrassing and something she was not prepared for in the least. She, the researcher and scientist, overlooking a part-and-parcel Plan B. 

She cleared her throat, finally conjuring a response. He wasn’t going to let her off easy, letting the silence stretch uncomfortably. “Almost all of your peers— the candidates I had readily available data on— almost all of them are… indisposed.” 

The saddest thing about this answer was that it wasn’t a lie. Or even a well-played exaggeration. It still did not dismiss the fact that she hadn’t cast a wider net. She had found Jon Snow and had latched on, the power behind the numbers and measures too intoxicating to ignore. 

His face turned grim, knowing what dark realities lived within her innocuous ‘indisposed’. “How long would it take?” He cleared his throat. “To uh… to find a new candidate?” 

“The process is more streamlined, now,” she answered, studying her cuticles in shame, “but it could take months.”

He breathed out a long sigh, hanging his head before turning to look at her more fully, the odd half-light of the sparring room girding his profile in silver gilt. 

He really was handsome, with lashes any girl would kill for and lips just as worthy of envy. She inwardly cursed herself. Attraction was definitely the last wrench she needed in this mess. 

“We don’t have that kind of time,” he pointed out, voice low and serious, almost more to himself than anything. 

She shook her head, something in his face making her heart pound against her ribs with a childish hope. 

He smiled at her a little, and her heart simply stopped. “Guess we should get started then.” 

+++ 


	2. ACT II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For as long as he had been a pilot, not one whiff of a ‘final solution’ had ever been presented. When the war had first started, almost a decade ago, he remembered Aerys Targaryen proposing an enormous shielding over the ruins of Old Valyria, where the Walkers seemed to spawn, but no construction crew could possibly withstand the radiation and Walkers would simply destroy any progress made, anyway. 
> 
> Thus, the Walker scourge had simply become… routine. A reality of life. For awhile there, it had become Jon’s, and many other men and women’s, job to tend to it. Like how a custodian had to tend to the trash cans that will always fill up or the toilet paper that will always run out. 
> 
> And now they had the chance to end it. _Forever._

ACT II

It was much too early the next morning when he heard the ‘buzz’ of the doorbell. 

Jon groaned and grabbed a pillow to shove over his face as Ghost roused from his spot on the floor to growl suspiciously at the door. Jon had always worked the night shift at the North Wall… he was not exactly a morning person.

“Ghost, to me,” he grumbled, knowing full well who the early-morning-sleep-disturber might be. Daenerys had told him before they had parted last night that Tyrion Lannister would be by to take him to _“see the other side of what we do here, Ranger.”_

He just hadn’t known it would be so gods-forsaken early. 

He turned over and threw his arm over his eyes with a sigh, thinking over the previous evening. What the fuck had he done last night?

Had he really agreed to be someone’s copilot? _Daenerys Targaryen’s_ copilot?

He was still struggling to believe that such a thing was possible. A carefully curated selection process for Drift compatibility… it sounded much too good to be true. But, then again, there was something about Daenerys that simply inspired confidence. 

Images of their spar last night flashed before his eyes— her flushed face and bright eyes as she came at him again and again, as fierce as anyone he’d ever gone in the ring with. Her chest heaving with the exertion of it, her little devilish smile whenever she would unseat him… __

 _Gods_ , this was going to go one of two ways, and he wasn’t sure which one was worse. 

There was another buzz at the door. “Ranger Snow?” a familiar voice called from beyond. 

“Give me a minute would you?” he groused, resigning himself to his fate. 

“Good morning,” Tyrion greeted as Jon finally emerged, hastily pulling his hair back into a messy bun. His visitor darted his eyes skeptically to Ghost, who stood beside him as always. “Ah… I am not so sure if a dog would be permitted into the laboratory, Ranger.” 

Jon had arguments to the contrary, seeing as though he now knew that his little brother was the head of said laboratory, but was presently too fucking tired and too occupied trying to zip up his jumpsuit to debate on it, so with a simple click of his tongue Ghost was left safely back in his room.

Tyrion gave him a grateful nod and they made their way down the hall. He’d almost forgotten how loquacious the dwarf was as he pelted him with well-meaning inquires as to the state of his room, his satisfaction with his meal the night before, and on and on. Jon tried his best to answer as gracefully as he could, but Tyrion finally relented as he watched him fight through his fourth bone-shaking yawn. 

“I’m sure they’ll have some coffee for you inside, Ranger,” he told him sympathetically as they slowed to a stop in front of a heavy steel door. He held his hand to heat-sensitive screen and it hummed, as if in thought, before there was a ‘click’ and the soft ‘hiss’ of an air lock and the massive doors rolled open to reveal something of a tunnel carved straight into a face of stone. 

“This is part of the old tunnel system… built by Maegor the Cruel thousands of years ago,” Tyrion said with a wave of his arm as they stepped forward into the gloom of the tunnel. “It’s my favorite thing about this gods’ forsaken fortress.” 

They continued along in silence for a time before coming to a door. Quite an ordinary door, considering the high tech quality of the rest of the facility— plain wood with an iron lock that Tyrion clicked open with an actual key.

The room on the other side was nothing at all like the rest of Dragon Pit Base. As Jon stepped through, he oddly thought of Winterfell. The floors were buffed stone, though they were the characteristic King’s Landing red as opposed to the lichen grey of the far North. The walls were lined with dark wood bookcases, jammed full with an odd assortment of dusty tomes, rolls of vellum, newer publications with glossy covers and thick plastic binders bristling with post-its and brightly colored tabs. 

“Jon!” 

“Bran!” he exclaimed with a smile that almost hurt as his eyes fell upon the young man sitting behind a large desk. He strode over to his brother and bent at the waist to fold him into a tight hug. “Gods, it’s been too fucking long.” 

Bran nodded his agreement, rolling his chair from under the desk so he could more fully face him. “Aye, it has, brother.” 

Jon beamed, all of his previous irritability and fatigue leaving him. Even after Arya’s assurances, he hadn’t really believed that his brother was actually here and now that the proof was quite literally staring right at him, he felt like he was walking on a cloud. 

“So,” Jon began, dragging a chair over and sitting down. “What are you doing here?” 

“Research,” Bran answered, patting a stack of papers beside him. 

“Didn’t get enough of that at university?”

Bran laughed and shook his head and they were silent for a moment. Jon took him in… really looking him over. He’d always worried about his kid brother— even before the accident that had left him paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair. Him and Bran were both loners, it was true, but where Jon would find solace in the gym or getting into trouble with their brother Robb, Bran preferred his books and stories and that was never a good recipe for a… vibrant social life for a young teen.

“You look well,” Jon observed and Bran smiled. And really, he did. Gods… he was practically a man, with sharp, thick-rimmed glasses and the evidence of an overdue shave over his jaw. The last time he had seen Bran, he had been just some acne-faced kid, going off to Old Town to study monsters and fairy tales and dead languages. 

Jon frowned at that sudden recollection. “Bran…” he began slowly, peering over the papers scattered on the desk next to him. “What does mythology and magic have to—“

 _“Jon Snow?!”_ came an astonished voice from the back of the room. Jon’s head shot up to catch sight of a very familiar man walking through a door he’d previously not noticed at the back of the room. 

“Samwell fucking Tarly!” he exclaimed as he shot from his chair and went to embrace his friend.

“What in the seven hells…” Sam said as they broke apart. He leaned to his left, looking at Bran past Jon’s arm. “Did you know he was here?”

Bran nodded and then shrugged in light of Sam’s accusatory glare. “Sorry.”

Sam returned his attention back to Jon, shaking his head. “If you’re not a sight for sore eyes, Snow.” 

He snorted. “Can’t imagine how that ever could be the case.” 

“I’m sorry for not telling you, Sam.” 

Jon looked sharply to the new voice, just now noticing that Daenerys had entered the room from behind Sam. She met his eyes with some amusement. “And for not telling you either, Ranger. I didn’t realize that you two knew each other.” 

“Oh, he’s just one of my oldest friends,” Sam provided, clapping Jon on the shoulder. “We came up in Basic together.”

“Not sure how he even got in,” Jon countered with a grin, hoping levity could shake the sudden tightness in his stomach upon seeing Daenerys. “I’ve never been so relieved to see someone get a transfer to IT.” 

“Still a regular old bastard, I see,” Sam returned, clapping Jon on the shoulder. He sobered, fingers tightening. “What the hells are you doing here?” 

“I’m a pilot,” Jon pointed out, “I think it’s quite obvious what I’m doing here. So, what exactly are _you two_ doing here?” 

“They’re helping us,” Tyrion interjected from where he had settled himself behind a computer screen across the room. His tiny, half-moon glasses glinted in the blue glow of the screen as he glanced over at them. “Can’t win a war if you don’t understand your enemy.”

“Aye,” Bran agreed, rolling his chair over to where Jon stood. “Let me show you something.” 

Jon followed Bran back through the door where Sam and Daenerys had emerged. What lay beyond was something like a cavern, the stone walls lined with glass specimen jars that filled the enormous space with a green and ghoulish glow. 

“Holy shit,” he muttered as he circled the room, peering through the glass of the jars. Within there were lidless, disembodied eyes the size of soccer balls floating in bubbling fluid, the blazing white-blue now faded to a dull gray. Lungs the length of a city bus, a heart that you could ride a horse through, what appeared to be a length of muscle the breadth of a tree trunk. All of it was wired to screens that read out data Jon could never begin to understand. 

The remnants of Walkers. The scraps of the monsters he used to defend the North from. 

He shook his head, struggling to take it all in. He’d never really stopped to think about _what_ exactly Walkers were. All he really needed to know was that they were threats to his family and how to take them out. It never occurred to him that they were made of the same material as any other creature— muscle and sinew, blood and bone. 

Stunned, he looked back to the others, who had gathered around a circular table at the center of the room. It was topped by a glass half dome that contained what looked very much to Jon like a brain. Or at least part of one.

“Is that… what I think it is?” he asked as he came closer. 

“A Walker brain,” Sam confirmed enthusiastically. 

“Didn’t think even a piece of their brain would be that big,” he muttered. Walkers were terrifying and powerful, to be sure, but thankfully they were dumb as rocks. 

Daenerys snorted in appreciation at his joke and he couldn’t help but preen, just a bit.

“We’ve been studying the Walkers for two years now,” Bran interrupted his paltry triumph, typing away at a keyboard. “It’s been difficult to gather parts… either the Walker dies in the middle of the ocean where we can’t get to the corpse, or criminals get to it first, harvest the most valuable bits.” 

Jon nodded, knowing just how robust the Walker folk medicine industry was… especially in his former neck of the woods at the North Wall, where good doctors were hard to come by and people were a special type of desperate. 

“But we finally got our hands on a brain!” Sam declared excitedly. Jon inwardly smiled, recognizing the eager expression on his friend’s face. He’d missed his dogged optimism. “About eight months ago was it, Daenerys?”

“Cost a bloody fortune,” she muttered. “Salador Saan strikes a hard bargain.” 

“So what can you do with a… Walker brain?” Jon asked, crossing his arms as he studied the specimen before him. Almost the entire surface was covered in wires and electrodes. 

“Drift with it,” Bran answered. 

“Excuse me?” he choked. “ _Drift_ with it?”

Bran nodded placidly, continuing to type away. “Isn’t that the easiest way to get into someone else’s brain? To Drift with them?”

Jon felt himself go oddly cold as he shared a faintly alarmed look with Daenerys. 

“Yes but… is this not dangerous?” Jon leveled his question squarely on the woman standing across from him. What the hells was she allowing to happen here? What in the _hells_ was she allowing his little brother do to himself?

Daenerys returned his stare, undaunted. “The brain is effectively dead, Ranger,” she countered flatly. “All Bran can access is the Walker’s memories.” 

“So he’s already Drifted with that fucking thing?” Jon protested loudly, unable to keep the anger from his voice. 

“Calm down, Jon,” Bran countered, voice cool. He gestured for him to come stand behind him. “I’ve been doing it for months now.”

Jon did as he was bidden, but did not take his eyes away from his brother. “That’s too bloody dangerous, Bran. People have fried their brain like a bloody egg Drifting with a _sibling_.” 

“We’re Starks, Jon. You may not be by name, but you are a Stark and Starks were wargs once upon a time.” 

_Bloody fucking hells_. “Bran… don’t tell me you actually believe—“

“Warging is just Drifting… without the aid of the gods, you see,” Bran went on. He nodded to the screen in front of him and Jon finally relented. What he was seeing he couldn’t really say… it looked to be a sketch of some sort of monster quite like the Walkers. He could see the blue of its eyes shining from its hulking, shadowy form, but not much else could be discerned. 

“What am I looking at?”

“We call him the Night King,” Sam answered instead from over Jon’s shoulder. 

He grimaced at that. “The Night King?” he asked. “Like that bloke from all the old stories?”

Bran nodded, the corner of his mouth up-turned in satisfaction. “He’s their king. Their master.”

He found that he couldn’t really form words, his mind buzzing. He looked to Daenerys for an explanation that didn’t come from Bran or Sam, who had obviously gone mental. 

Daenerys stepped closer to him, the picture of cool confidence. “Bran and Sam believe that if we kill the Night King, we can end this. Forever.”

“Fucking hells,” Jon breathed, heart pounding in his throat. He looked back the other two. “How sure are you of this?”

“We’ve gotten the margin of error down to about 3 percent,” Sam answered, as if that meant anything to him. “That’s pretty damn sure.” 

“I’m still trying to decipher their language,” Bran added. “Then maybe I can understand what exactly the Night King _is_.”

“ _Language?_ ” he interjected. “These things can bloody talk?”

“Every living thing communicates somehow,” Bran replied patiently and Jon couldn’t help but feel a bit stupid. 

“I’m sorry…” he began, shaking his head. “It’s just… a lot to take in. I’ve never really thought of Walkers as… living things before. They’ve just been…”

“Monsters,” Daenerys supplied for him and he nodded. “Make no mistake, Jon, though we are learning more about them every day thanks to your brother and your friend, the Walkers are still every bit the monsters we always thought them to be.”

“She’s right,” Bran said. “I’m fascinated with them… they’re a remnant of a bygone age, an age that I’ve spent my life studying. But, from what we’ve learned, their only intent is to destroy our world.”

Jon shook his head again, eyes roving over the grainy image of the hulking beast on the screen. To him, it looked nothing more than another Walker. Another pest to be exterminated. “What makes you think killing this… Night King will end it all?”

“From what we’ve been able to gather… the Walkers have a hive mind… like ants or bees. It’s like they share one brain.” Bran tapped a finger to his temple. “When I drift with this… thing, I seem to be able to access memories from different sources, but never from _this_ one.” He pointed to the shadowy figure on the screen, rubbed at his stubbly chin. “I think he controls them. The Walkers are his thralls. Destroy him, you’ve killed their brain.”

Jon felt his heart kick up again, the prospect of an actual _end_ to this fucking war too much to hope for. “So... where is this fucker?” 

“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Sam answered, dejected. He waved a hand to the brain fragment in front of them. “No matter how long Bran stays in there, how far he goes in the Drift, he can’t seem to get _that_ far.” 

“We think we need a more complete brain… a fresher one, with fresher memories,” Bran added. 

“Fuck,” was all Jon could really conjure. 

They were all silent for a moment as he allowed himself some time to try to soak it all in. 

For as long as he had been a pilot, not one whiff of a ‘final solution’ had ever been presented. When the war had first started, almost a decade ago, he remembered Aerys Targaryen proposing an enormous shielding over the ruins of Old Valyria, where the Walkers seemed to spawn, but no construction crew could possibly withstand the radiation and Walkers would simply destroy any progress made, anyway. 

Thus, the Walker scourge had simply become… routine. A reality of life. For awhile there, it had become Jon’s, and many other men and women’s, job to tend to it. Like how a custodian had to tend to the trash cans that will always fill up or the toilet paper that will always run out. 

And now they had the chance to end it. _Forever._

He looked at Daenerys, who stared back at him bravely, the light of understanding in her eyes binding them as good as any rope. She knew exactly what he was thinking in that moment, because it was the same incredulity she surely had to conquer herself. She had pursued an idea that countless others with perhaps more talent for such problems had failed at time and again, and she was on the cusp of actually realizing it. 

Of saving the fucking world. 

He was overwhelmed with a strange emotion… was it gratitude? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that there was a flame burning in his belly that hadn’t been there in a long while and it was all because of her. Because she had the courage to do this. The cleverness to bring together a scholar of mysteries and mythos many had discounted as fairy tales with an earnest computer scientist with a passion for statistics. A coding prodigy that no doubt had enormous difficulty trying to prove herself to anyone else due to her age and gender. A veritable army of military rejects and forgotten proletariats cast out from a failing economy willing to jump into the fray. 

An ex-Dragon pilot that had been chewed up and spat out and had all but given up on the whole damn thing. 

“Another Walker attack is imminent.” Bran’s voice pierced through the the sound of his pounding heart. He blinked, fog clearing and he looked back to his brother. “Sam predicts five to ten days.”

Sam nodded, licking his lips as if he were suddenly nervous. “Eight is my bet, but… you know what they say… there isn’t any certainty in statistics.” 

Jon felt the weight of Daenerys’ eyes on him and he dared to meet them.

“Then that’s when we’ll get you what you need,” Jon declared, surprised by the genuine promise behind his words, not looking away from her. It was a confidence he hadn’t felt in an age. 

He looked back to Bran. “And then we can end this fucking war.” 

+++

After that, it was easy.

A little _too_ easy, if she was being honest.

Not that it had been that hard before, but now Jon seemed firmly and irrefutably in her corner— as eager and determined as any of the younger, less jaded recruits under her careful prevue. 

To be quite honest, it scared her… how quickly their training progressed. How perfectly the numbers and metrics matched up as the days went by. She’d known that running him through the trials would be a formality, but still. 

“What’s it looking like?” she had asked Missy a day ago. She’d bent down to read the data being measured out in real-time on the screen as Jon had bobbed and weaved from the other side of the two-way observation mirror. He’d been undergoing the reflex trial— by far one of their more… cutting edge and unconventional tests. The measure of the test was based upon how the subject reacted to series of lights and flashes, pulses under the subject’s feet, whistles and chimes, ambient noises that shifted like the tide, blasts of air inches from the subject’s nose. 

Missy had turned to look at her, one eyebrow arched. “Just fucking get in a Dragon with him, boss,” she’d deadpanned. “It’s fucking scary how much it matches up.” 

And so it went.

After long days of physical training, assorted trials and rigorous test taking, her and Jon would retreat to the same sparring room where they had first put their supposed ‘Drift compatibility’ to the test to continue with their training.

Most of the other recruits were also starting to pair off by this point, despite the testing period not ending for another two days. The trials had so far done their job— slowly eliminating copilot options by the day. Unbeknownst to said recruits, they were venturing into the murkier and more unpredictable part of the process. 

An alarmingly large part of being Drift compatible was instilling trust. And trust could only be formed under certain criterion. One of which being a common purpose, which had been established from the moment they signed up. Another manifesting itself in a set of metrics that told them, little by little, who was meant to be their copilot. Humans’ innate distrust in figures and charts would naturally lead candidates to test these datums and measures themselves. 

And, hopefully, the rest would go from there. 

Her and Jon, however, largely skipped the “testing the waters” phase of their training. It was if they were copilots already. 

Most times, they would spar, exchanging tips and advice while she would strive to keep her eyes from lingering on his own, pupils blown wide from adrenaline. Or his mouth as he cried out a command meant to improve her form. Or the pulse pounding in his neck or the sweat that rolled down his forearm or— 

It was all very unfair, by her estimation.

To make things worse, the tension between them during their physical training was somehow second to when they would sit across from one another at a work bench after a spar. When he would draw poorly rendered diagrams of Dragon Unit cockpits, would try to explain to her what the Drift was like, describe the feeling of being in the thick of battle. The passion and purpose behind his voice, the fire that had kindled within him after only a few days… it was difficult for her to resist the urge to let herself bask in the heat of it. 

And it wasn’t as if she were ignorant of his own rapt attention as she drew up her own diagrams, explained ‘metrics’ and ‘biomarkers’, railed against the greed of the powerful in the world and how it did nothing but hold humanity back. Their time together became something of a cat-and-mouse game. Who could pretend they hadn’t been staring the best?

She wasn’t sure either one of them were winning.

The thing was, she knew precisely how invasive and intimate this process would be. She had engineered it herself, after all. Had reared it from infancy with her own hand. Drift compatibility was, at its core, to be unflinchingly known by one’s copilot. It was one thing to build this vital intimacy and knowledge with a blood relative— a bond innate, indestructible and, above all, unconditional. It was another to build that from virtually nothing between two strangers. 

That was what her whole system was _for_.

She had never once considered that it might lead to things much more complicated than a simple professional relationship. Developing… _feelings_ could only complicate an already complicated and delicate process. 

She just _had_ to be Drift compatible with a man. A man who looked like him and fought like him. Who was kind, loyal, seemingly brave and determined and—

“I think… we should try to Drift tomorrow.” 

She blinked at him from across the table, his declaration effectively breaking the pensive spell she had been under. 

He sighed and leaned closer to her over the table, eyes earnest. “Only have a couple more days until the next Walker event, at best. We need time in the Drift. That’s most important.”

“You’re right,” she said, voice tight. She looked to her cuticles, her stomach all in knots, heart hammering in her ears. “I’m just... frightened.” 

There was a long silence and Dany felt a welter of shame boil up within her. Why should she be so frightened? After she had engineered these metrics and studies to make this process as fool proof and safe as possible? 

_”The first Drift is always hardest,”_ he had told her some nights ago, and the warning rang in her head like a klaxon. 

She looked up at him after a moment, the silence unnerving, but all her anxiety quieted when she caught the look he was giving her, the lines around his eyes concerned and knowing. Fond. 

“You remember,” he began roughly, “when this shit all started… you remember Winterfell?”

She felt her mouth go dry. It was the most inland city to ever be hit. It had been an outlier, an anomaly. The monster had made its way up the White Knife largely unchallenged, no Dragon Units to slow its progress. 

“That was my home,” he told her, voice cracking. “And I was there when it was destroyed. Took my father with it.” When he looked back up at her and his expression made her chest tighten. He sniffed loudly and laughed a bit, the sound odd and awkward. “When I was eight years old, I fell off a horse, broke my ankle.” He looked up at the ceiling, reminiscing. “Let’s see… oh, I saw my sister naked once on accident. Pretty traumatizing.” 

_Oh_. 

He was _warning_ her. Preparing her for what she may see out there in the Drift with him. 

She felt all that teeming tension within her unspool and she gave him a grateful smile. 

“My mother died when I was very young,” she began after a beat. “It was a slow, agonizing process. And… although I was young, I can still... remember her in the hospital. All thin and small under the sheets...”

She trailed off and watched him process this, tuck it away for later. 

“Never knew my mother,” he offered in return, eyes focused on the tabletop. He coughed, twitched his shoulders. “Only mother I ever knew didn’t want me around.”

She nodded, eyes overly warm. “I'm sorry.” He shook his head at that, dismissive. “I kind of know how that feels— to be unwanted by someone who should be… family.” She swallowed and looked down at her lap, picked at a thumbnail. “My brother… the younger one, Viserys, he was always cruel to me. Insulted me, hit me… he even—“ 

“Don’t.”

She looked up and there was something in his face she hadn’t seen before.

She’d only known him little over a week. Almost ten days if she were trying to be precise about it. She had come to know Jon Snow the soldier, the student, the teacher, the pilot. Even Jon Snow the friend. She’d never seen… this. Jon Snow the White Wolf. The warrior, the protector. 

Her hands tightened over the edge of the bench. She didn’t need to be afraid anymore. 

She stood and walked to his side, placed a palm on his shoulder. She felt the muscle beneath loosen. “Meet me at Bay Nine tomorrow morning.” 

+++

“Meet Balerion,” Dany declared with a sweep of her arm as they approached the monolith looming above them. 

It was the most beautiful machine he’d ever seen. 

He was glad for the distraction, because Daenerys’ sleek, black and red Dragon Scale bodysuit left very fucking little to the imagination and he was already fucked enough as it was. 

He had glimpsed the Unit from afar not a week ago, had marveled at it like one would ‘oo’ and ‘ahh’ at a star— impressed, but in a vague, remote way. Up close, it was a different experience altogether. 

Cold, black steel and red carbon fiber scales glimmered under the harsh flood lights like precious stones. The plates were torsional, fluted— elegant and savage all at once.

It was an older machine, a Mach 4. He could tell by turbine chamber in the center of its chest, but it was built unlike any other he’d ever seen. Long Claw had been beautiful in her own right, but she was a brutal, clunky thing compared to the specimen in front of him.

He circled once around it, looking it up and down, noting the newly shining seams of welded metal, the freshly buffed pieces of armor fresh from a crucible. The weapons— Dragonfire canon, a Singing Harpy missile array, a Wildfire warhead, rocket powered joists for overpowered blows and maximized speed. 

He whistled in appreciation. It would certainly put up a hell of a fight. He pointed up to the right hand, where there seemed to be some sort of housing situated on the wrist. “What’s that for?”

Dany trotted closer to see what he was asking about. “That’s Dark Sister.” Jon raised an eyebrow at her in question. “It’s a… new feature. A sword.” 

Well that certainly was different. Many Dragon Units had blades of some sort, but they were almost always affixed and static, used for defense only. 

“So, this is ours?” he asked. “This our Dragon?”

Her smile was broad, not self conscience in the least. “Yes.”

“And let me guess…” he brushed a thumb over a bright seam of fresh welding, the callous of his palm rasping over the grain of the steel. “You’ve worked on it yourself.”

“Not without lots of help,” she was sure to clarify and he was charmed all the more. “Want to see inside?” 

He nodded and she led him to a lift and they stood in silence as it rattled and whined on its long journey to the cockpit. 

“We had to retrofit it,” Daenerys explained as they stepped from the lift and onto a catwalk over the Unit’s shoulder. They paused by the hatch for the cockpit and she looked at him with an expression that made his stomach twist. “It… Balerion was my brother’s Dragon. And he—“

“Piloted alone,” Jon provided, voice soft with dreadful understanding. Viserys Targaryen… one of the greatest pilots of the war, unravelled by long hours of unfettered exposure to the Drift. 

Daenerys nodded, lips pressed tightly together, her expression far away. 

He reached his hand out, not really knowing why, and pressed her elbow between his thumb and fingers. All that strength and power that resided within her… and she felt much too delicate in his grasp. She looked up at him, some of that fog lifting, and he nodded toward the hatch. 

“I want to see.” 

She gave him a watery, grateful smile and he dropped his hand as they stepped through the hatch. 

His breath caught painfully in his lungs. Stepping back into a Dragon was like stepping back into the past. Back into a life he thought long dead. The scar over his heart prickled and he pushed a thumb to it, willing the discomfort away. 

He ran his fingers over the smooth, cool chrome of the harness. He had to close his eyes against the images of him and his brother suiting up, blood boiling in their veins at the prospect of sending another demon to its death. He let out a long breath through his nose. 

“Jon?”

He turned around, almost alarmed, having slipped so far into memory he was unsure of where he was for an instant.

“I know that this… is a lot,” she continued, hands twitching in front of her. “I understand if you need—“

“No,” he cut across her quickly. What was it that she thought he needed? More time? What time did they have, now? And besides… she had already done so much… what else could he possibly ask for? “Let’s do it.”

She smiled, though it was a nervous, unsure gesture. He couldn’t really blame her. He was scared because he knew exactly what it was like in the Drift. She was scared because, for all her study and numbers and research, she didn’t. 

“Here’s your armor,” she said, indicating a glass-fronted case built flush into the wall of the cockpit with a wave of her arm. Jon whistled, the armor sleeker and meaner than anything he had ever had the honor of donning in his time as a ranger in the past. The plates were the color of stone, accented with a mossy green. On one of the pauldrons was the stenciled face of a snarling dire wolf. 

He was touched.

She stepped forward and pressed a button that slid the glass back into the wall. “It’s been redesigned… can be easily attached and detached by the pilot alone. But…” she trailed off, stepping away and pointing to a spot on the floor just in front of the case. “Stand there with your arms out and your feet apart.” 

He gave her a quizzical look but stepped forward and did as was instructed. 

“Suit up,” she called out and before he quite understood what was happening, four mechanical arms were extending out from the wall, placing the armor upon calf and arm, torso and shoulder, clicking it home on the ridges and piping on his Dragon Scale suit that he had previously assumed were purely aesthetic. 

“Holy hells,” he breathed, admiring the work after the arms had completed their work and receded back into the wall. “That’s damn useful.” 

Dany smiled and walked over to the opposite side of the cockpit, going through the same process for herself. Her armor was red and black, a dragon glinting on her shoulder. 

She looked wholly in her element and Jon couldn’t help but smile, oddly proud. 

She turned to face the front of the cockpit. “Missy? You there?”

“Here, boss,” the voice of Daenerys’ friend filled the cabin. “And so is Sergeant Stark.” 

“Don’t fuck this up, Jon,” chirped Arya’s familiar voice. 

He barked a laugh. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, sis.” 

“That’s Sergeant to you, Ranger,” she retorted. “Now let’s see what you’ve got.”

“Everything good to go?” Daenerys asked, maybe stalling a bit.

“All weapons’ systems off,” Missy assured. “Just waiting on you, boss.”

She nodded and Jon watched her as she turned to her harness, looking it over blankly and he inwardly cursed. Under normal circumstances, they’d have a team of techs in here to help them strap in, but seeing as though they were doing this all so clandestinely, right under her disapproving brother’s nose, they had to run on a skeleton crew for this go round. 

“Here...” He stepped forward. “I’ll help you.” 

“Thanks.” 

Awkwardly, he eased her into the stirrups, hooked her up to the so-called ‘mother cord’, pulled the weird helmet made of electrodes and wires over her head. He smiled reassuringly at her when he was done, watching as she adjusted her grip on the controls. “Kinda weird, huh?”

She nodded, her own smile small, but eager. It seemed as though all of her previous trepidation had leeched away, replaced only with what Jon could describe as heady excitement. A simple elation that this time had finally come. 

He felt his chest tighten like it had been banded with an iron rung.

He couldn’t fuck this up. 

He nodded in affirmation, a bit shaken, and walked to his own harness. He could strap himself in easily enough, though it was a tad less graceful, maybe, as evidenced by Daenerys’ quiet giggling at his expense. 

“Ready?” He asked her, holding his helmet above his head. 

“Ready.” 

He pulled his helmet on and Daenerys gave the all clear. All too soon, he was falling forward again. Into the rushing warmth and the odd, blueish glow. 

_”Neural handshake complete.”_

+++

Jon had told her how odd it would feel, but even his thorough descriptions failed to fully prepare her. 

It was if she had been gently tipped off a cliff, but instead of free falling, she was sinking like a stone through a warm, rushing river. Her belly swooped and the breath left her lungs. Her limbs crumbled to silt and slowly drifted behind her. 

Images both familiar and not flickered past— two young boys wrestling on a sunlit lawn, her and Rhaegar racing their horses down a narrow lane, a teenaged Jon with a red headed girl in his arms, dancing under the white spangle of a disco ball. 

And, quite suddenly, she was kneeling on solid ground. 

Jon was nowhere to be found, and she definitely was not in the cockpit of a Dragon Unit. The ground beneath her feet was broken asphalt, all around her nothing but rubble and wreckage… tangles of rebar and smoking timbers. 

Jon had warned her that this may happen— that she might not pull herself up quickly enough, and she would end up in a memory. His or hers he couldn’t say. 

_”The first Drift is always hardest,”_

_Breathe_ , she told herself, just as he had advised. _Just… breathe._

An unearthly cry rent the air like a thunderbolt. The power and proximity of it knocked her clean to the ground. She scrabbled away on hands and knees, terror clawing in her belly as she found a scrap of brick wall to shelter behind. 

A great, clawed foot came crashing down not a dozen feet from where she had just stood. The force of it rocked her to the roots of her teeth, crumbling what was left of the brick foundation that served as her safe haven. She screamed in anguish as she backed away from the falling debris.

The beast screeched again and Daenerys looked up to see it swatting at the fighter jets that swooped in with its thorny, webbed hands. The brave pilots fired mortar after mortar, missile after missile to little affect. The beast managed to clip one jet on the wing and it went spinning to the earth in bloom of fire. 

“JON!” she shouted, not knowing what else to do. 

It was as if the demon heard her. It came down on all fours with a mighty crash and bent its ugly, scaly head so close to her she could feel the awful heat of its breath. She stared, frozen and breathless, into the hellish swirl of the creature’s white-blue eyes. 

“ _Daenerys_ ,” she heard somewhere through the fog of her fear, through the blood pounding in her ears… like a voice calling from another time. 

The demon blinked at her, lips quivering and curling in a fearsome, awful grin, revealing pearly fangs that glistened with putrid saliva. 

“ _Daenerys!_ ” she heard again, closer this time. Louder. 

Her limbs unlocked, her voice found her lungs. “Jon?” she breathed, looking around her frantically.

The beast growled, the rumble making the dust and rubble under her palms tremble. 

“Jon! I’m here!” she yelled. 

The jaws opened wide, the breath so rancid she nearly wretched. Her eyes burned, streamed with tears.

“DANY!” 

She turned and he was there, but he was wearing his Dragon Scale bodysuit, not a speck of dust on him. Where had he come from? He looked entirely too clean. Too new. Not of this world.

“Dany, it’s not real.”

She shook her head, the puff of demon’s breath at her back very much real to her. Could he not feel it?

“Take my hand.” 

She hesitated, looking at his outstretched hand skeptically, back up at him. His face was so open and pleading. 

“Trust me.” 

She wanted to, she did. They were copilots now… weren’t they? She couldn’t really remember… but she heard the roar of jet engines above her and turned away. Her and the hellion looked to the sky, watched as the belly of a plane opened up right above them and a round, black vessel of death and ruin came tumbling from it. 

She felt her blood run cold, the sounds of screams filling her ears like swarming locusts. Something within her snapped, her mind and awareness flooding back to her in one, heady rush. She gasped and blindly threw herself in Jon’s arms just before the warhead could find its mark.

She felt as if she had been sling-shotted, flung clean from the earth and she was falling up and up and up until the rushing in her ears became too much to bear and she knew no more. 

+++

_Fuck, fuck, fuck…_

The alarms were blaring when he came back to, the AI calling out much too calmly: _”Neural overload. Warning! Neural overload…”_

He ripped off his helmet, frantically tore away all the other shackles of his intricate harness as he stared, terrified, at Daenerys’ limp form beside him. She was so _fucking_ close, but somehow miles and miles away, in more ways than one. 

_“Daenerys!”_ he roared, finally getting his feet free from the stirrups. He stumbled over to her, his hands coming up to cup her face, searching for her eyes though he knew he wouldn’t find them. Her skin was clammy, her face contorted in fear. 

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Fuck, fuck…”

“We should abort!” came Arya’s frantic call over the speaker. “Pull the plug—“  


_“NO!”_ he bellowed, his blood pounding in his ears, breath coming as if he’d run for miles. “You can’t yank her out like that! It could fucking kill her with how deep she is!”

“Then what the fuck do we do?” Missy, this time. 

_Shit, shit, shit…_

“I can get her out,” he answered, breath still heaving, willing himself to calmer waters. He’d be useless to Daenerys if he lost his head right now. “Can you shut her up?” he asked, waving his hand toward the ceiling impatiently. The alarm cut out and the silence left behind was eerie and tense, but he needed the quiet— needed her to be able to hear him. 

He yanked his gloves off, breathed out, long and slow, and pressed his brow to her own… though it was more like the bridge of her nose, considering the helmet she still wore. 

He’d only had to do this once before, when his brother had gotten lost in the same hell scape he knew Dany was trapped in now. 

He tucked his fingers under the collar of her suit, brushed his thumbs over the line of her jaw. It was the most skin he could reach, the closest he could get to her considering the constraints of armor and harness. 

“Daenerys,” he said firmly, flexing his fingers a bit. 

She whimpered, her eyes darting frantically under their lids, trapped and lost in a nightmare. 

His nightmare. 

“Daenerys!” he shouted, knocking his brow into her own a bit. It felt odd to yell at her, especially in such close quarters… but she was in deep and he needed to pull her back. 

His heart leapt in his throat when he heard her utter his name in response, though weakly. He stepped even closer, toe to toe with her now, the grip on her jaw perhaps too firm. 

He waited. And waited. His blood thundered in his ears, his breath burned and burned in his lungs. 

“Jon! I’m here!” 

His eyes slammed shut, the fear in her voice intolerable. “I’m here Dany,” he found himself whispering. “I’m here, I’m here…”

But she didn’t respond. He could feel her falling further from his grasp, fumbling deeper into a world that could not be more hellish.

“DANY!” he screamed, desperate, but to no avail. “It’s not real, Dany!” 

Whatever hold he had managed to gather over his composure was slipping fast. Sweat bloomed from every pore, his blood rushing into a frothing boil in his veins. There was a bitter tang in the back of his throat— copper, sugar… the taste of bile.

He reached numb hands down to her own, dangling limp and lifeless at her sides. 

“Take my hand!”

But no answer came, no sudden grip on his palm, no call of his name. 

He gritted his teeth, clutched her hands in desperation. He felt that edge inching ever nearer… that yawning void of grief and pain. He couldn’t lose another copilot. 

Couldn’t lose her, too, damnit all. 

“Trust me.” The words came out rusted over, pitted and frail, but he imbued them with every last promise he had left within him.

The seconds dragged, pulling him further and further into a slow, sucking mud of torment. 

Then strength returned to the fingers he held in his hands and she had them in a death grip. She sucked in a huge, rattling breath, as if emerging from the bottom of a lake, and fell forward into his chest. 

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Dany…”

He fumbled with her helmet, tore the other restraints away, impatient to get her as far away from the thing that had done this to her.

 _“Jon!”_ she gasped, collapsing into him the moment she was free. He gathered her up hastily, his shaking arms coming up around her with newfound strength as he settled himself on the cold chrome of the floor. 

For a moment, they were alone, the only two people left upon the earth. He rocked her, shushed her, the only things he knew to do. Her hair was sweat slicked, sticking to her face and jaw like kelp and he brushed the webby tendrils away. Her face was red and hot, sticky with tears. 

“You’re okay,” he murmured into the shell of her ear, the ache in his chest immense. He brought his brow down to her own, not knowing how else to brand her with his presence, how else to bring her fully back to him.

Jon looked up at the sound of the hatch opening with a ‘hiss’. To his immense shock, Tyrion Lannister stood at the threshold, instead of Arya or Missandei. 

The dwarf stepped forward, but stopped short, perhaps sensing Jon’s rising heckles. He’d once been called the White Wolf. He’d ensure that everyone here knew well why if they tried to part him from her just yet. 

“We need to get her to the infirmary,” Tyrion told him as if gentling a spooked horse.

Jon swallowed, nodded, some of his senses returning. Right, a doctor. Medical attention. “Dany,” he began gently, “we need to get you to a doctor.”

Her forehead pressed into the pulse of his neck, and she nodded. “Okay”

He breathed out a heavy sigh of relief… not only at her consent, but at her voice— it sounded much stronger than he could have ever guessed. 

Missy and Arya had piled in behind Tyrion, looking over them both as if someone had died. Jon felt a stab of annoyance as well as something like guilt in his gut. 

“Hold on,” he told Dany, urging her arms up and around his neck. She did as told and he stood, slowly, supporting her hips with his hands. 

“Can you walk?” 

She nodded mutely, and before he could do much of anything, Arya and Missandei had both stepped forward to duck their shoulders under her arms. She took their help readily, and Jon watched her go, gathering himself, a bit helpless.

But Dany halted, swayed and Jon was there in two long strides, catching her again as she crumpled, too weak still for the journey on her own two feet. He scooped her up before she even had time to fall, and he felt that she was all but weightless. 

“Someone show me the way,” he gritted out, trying not to scream in panic, his mind a blank buzz all over again. 

Missandei ducked ahead of him and he adjusted Dany in his arms. “Dany,” he pleaded, “wake up for me, please.” His adrenaline was carrying them both, but as they descended on the lift, he knew that his arms would give out if she did not wake up to support some of her weight on his chest. 

She stirred before they even made it to the ground, her lashes fluttering, and when her eyes met his he felt as if his heart was in a vise. Something fierce lived in her gaze, just then, and it was like being bound and branded and escape was futile. 

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, bringing her arms around his neck, managing to hoist herself up a bit and the relief on his arms was minimal, but just enough. 

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he muttered as they stepped form the lift. 

“Where we going…?” 

“Have to get you to a doctor.” 

“You won’t…” she trailed off, swallowing, her eyes filling with tears. “Will you… stay?”

“Of course,” he answered automatically, though, he suspected she wasn’t just asking about staying with her while she was being poked and prodded in the doctor’s office. Not that it mattered, the answer was true either way. “‘M not going anywhere.” 

She nodded, looking a bit pitiful, if he were being honest… nose red, cheeks splotchy, eyes swollen and glazed with exhaustion. Her head fell to his chest again, and he felt her hot brow pressing under his jaw. 

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was a wretched thing and he suspected that she wasn’t apologizing to him for scaring the life out of him, for the screaming muscles of his arms.

He felt his eyes heat, his arms clutch her closer, and he picked up the pace. 

+++

She felt pathetic.

Her body was ephemeral, all light and energy… not quite coalesced into a solid mass. Her particles were caught in the gravity of his touch, the current of his voice. Nothing else really made sense. 

Where was she? Where were the sirens? Those poor people? Where was the bomb? The monster that had sniffed her out through the ruins? 

Jon had pulled her out, and that’s all that mattered. 

Even during the medical exam, it was… painful to be away from him, and not exactly in a physical way, though that was there. It was more like a clenching, yearning tension within her, something that needed relaxing, balancing, and he was that counterweight. 

“You’re experiencing Neural Saturation Syndrome,” the nurse explained to her. “Most people call it the Drift Hangover… happens whenever a Drift goes bad.” 

Dany nodded, still feeling numb, rudderless. She’d known that, superficially, but she’d never considered that she and Jon would have a bad Drift. The numbers… all her measures and metrics—

“Take this,” the nurse told her patiently, handing her a pill and some water. “It’ll help clear your head.” Dany did as told as the nurse took a few more of her vitals. Her pulse was sluggish, her blood pressure still a bit low, and she burned with a low-grade fever… but it was nothing too alarming, according to the nurse.

“You’ll be a bit groggy for the next day or two. Take some aspirin before you go to sleep or you’ll get a hell of a headache.” She jotted some notes on her clipboard. “I suggest you take a walk… fresh air and movement will help bring you fully back to earth, hm?”

Dany nodded, not really knowing what to say… or what to do. She felt so… _strange_. Distant and floaty, tied to a loose mooring. 

“I’m going to give your copilot some instructions, Miss Targaryen. He’s not to leave you until you feel better.” The nurse placed a cool rag on her face and Dany felt a shiver go down her spine. It felt awful and blissful all at once. 

“Why?” Dany managed to ask, voice raw and wrecked. She couldn’t help the rush of relief at these words. She wasn’t so sure how she would manage, alone in her room without him there to tether her to the earth. But she also hated this feeling… this pitiful dependence. 

And what about Jon? How would _he_ feel about this arrangement? He certainly didn’t sign up to act nurse maid to her, even if it was only for a day or two. 

The nurse gave her a knowing, sympathetic look. “Right now, you are here, but not all of you, Miss Targaryen. You need a… magnet of sorts, to get _all of you_ back.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder to the door, where Jon waited outside. “He’s your magnet. It was his memory you were caught in, and it was him who found you and brought you out. It is imperative that he stay with you. That way, you’ll recover faster and with minimal trauma.” She gave her a little smirk. “I don’t think that should be too hard of an order for either of you to follow, I’m assuming?”

Dany felt herself redden, looking to her nails, not sure at all how to take that comment at this juncture. The nurse excused herself and stepped out, presumably to have her chat with Jon. 

When he entered again to come collect her, sniffy and pitiful on the edge of the exam table, she nearly cried, and damnit it all if he didn’t seem to know exactly what to do. 

He put his chin on the top of her head and simply held her for a moment, until she soaked up enough of the strange strength he emanated, and slid from the table.

After a few more prescriptions and instructions from the nurse, they made their way out of the infirmary. She tucked herself readily under Jon’s arm, legs still feeling a bit gelatinous. Once into the waiting area, she looked up to see Arya, Missy, and Tyrion waiting for her.

And her brother, Rhaegar. 

The first thing Dany thought was how odd it was to see her brother outside of his office, resplendent in the part and parcel corporate accoutrema of a businessman of his stature. 

But that benign observation was immediately vacated by the sinking in her belly. 

“Dany,” her brother breathed, crossing the room in two swift strides and snatching her up into his arms. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she answered weakly. “Just… need rest.”

Rhaegar released her and held her at arms’ length, looking her over. Shame flared up within in her under her brother’s concerned scrutiny. 

The jig was up, now.

Rhaegar’s piercing gaze flicked to Jon, standing a pace behind her. “You,” he began hotly, his finger pointing at Jon as if he were the perpetrator he recognized in a police line up. “You’re the one who did this.” 

Jon said nothing, unmovable in the face of Rhaegar’s sudden wrath as he stepped closer to him. 

“I want your things packed by the end of the day, Ranger.” 

“Rhaegar—“ Dany sputtered, her overtaxed mind not at all equipped to deal with her brother and his temper at this moment. 

“I’m not so sure you’re my commanding officer,” Jon retorted coolly. 

“I don’t give a shit!” Rhaegar roared. “I want you out of this base by dawn.” 

“It wasn’t his fault,” Dany pleaded. “It was all my idea—“

“Who do I need to speak to about getting this man off the property?” Rhaegar was now turned to the others, all standing mute in the face of his rarely seen anger. 

“That’d be me, sir,” Arya answered him, teeth gritted, arms crossed over her chest. “And I’ll go ahead and save you the trouble: I’m not doing it. Ranger Snow is the only reason your sister isn’t strapped to a fucking bed right now.” 

“Is that so?” he questioned. “Because by _my_ estimation, Sergeant, the only reason my sister was in the Drift in the first place was because of this washed up, PTSD-riddled—“

“ _STOP!_ ” Dany shouted. It nearly took all the breath from her, and black spots danced in her eyes with the outburst. Rhaegar wheeled around, eyes wide with shock. “Rhaegar, I was there because of Jon, yes, but he was only there because I asked him.” 

Her brother’s face drained, his jaw going slack. There was a tense silence in which Dany watched as the gears turned in his head, the thought of his dear little sister betraying a promise she had made to him so unthinkable that it took a good, long moment for it to settle in. He looked to the ground, swallowing hard before looking back up at her, the hurt in his face too much for her to bear. 

“I see,” he said quietly. “I suppose… I should have seen this coming.” 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say. 

He shifted his shoulders, straightened his tie, as if gathering himself before a big keynote speech. “Well, I can’t say that I’m not disappointed, but I guess one good thing came from this folly.” He looked back to Jon and his eyes sparked with a light that Dany knew all too well. “Now that this… grand experiment of yours has failed, we can move on and you will never step foot in the Drift again.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Jon ventured with no trace of said deference evident in his voice, “but I believe your sister is a grown woman and can make her own decisions.”

Rhaegar simply blinked, as if Jon were some beast who had suddenly gained the power of speech. “Yes, she is, Ranger,” he answered tightly. “So why do you think she would decide to Drift with the likes of you again after what’s happened?”

Dany hadn’t had the bandwidth to consider what may happen next when it came to her and Jon Drifting again, but at her brother’s words she felt herself bristling. 

“Stop it,” she growled. “Jon is my copilot… it’s done, Rhaegar. And we’re going out there—“

“Like the all the seven hells you are,” he cut her off with a disbelieving scoff. He shook his head in bewilderment. “I can’t believe I’ve amused you all this time… this whole thing is obviously foolishness. A little game you’ve been playing at—“

“This isn’t a fucking game,” Jon cut across him firmly. “Daenerys is the only one who has a plan to end this thing, and you want to flush it all away because of a bad Drift?” 

“I don’t recall speaking to you, Ranger.”

“If we had called off every mission because of a bad Drift we’d all be fucking dead right now,” he pressed, his voice growing in volume and heat. 

“My sister can’t be—“

“You don’t even know, do you?” Jon cut across him again, and Dany was momentarily trapped between being immeasurably impressed at his boldness, and annoyed that he should be so cavalier. “You have no clue what your sister has been working on, the sheer fucking _magnitude_ of what she could accomplish with this. She has a _final soultion_ to a problem your family started. She’s asked me to be a part of it, gods know why… we can agree on that much… but I know I’ll ever achieve a higher honor. And _none_ of this can happen without her.” 

Dany felt herself warm, though she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the fever spiking. Her brother seemed stunned into silence, standing limply in the harsh fluorescence of the empty waiting room. She couldn’t determine what had addled her brother more: Jon’s astounding lack of a self-preservation instinct in the face of the one person who, for all intents and purposes, was paying his salary, or the actual contents of what Jon was telling him. 

Dany had left Rhaegar largely in the dark on purpose. She figured the less he knew, the better she could hide her own ulterior motives. She was coming to realize that that was perhaps not the wisest choice. 

“Is this true, Dany?” Rhaegar finally asked her, looking faintly amazed. 

She nodded, a knot of nausea choking the words from her throat. 

No one spoke for a long moment and Dany felt as if she would collapse with the slightest provocation. “Tyrion,” she managed, “will you show my brother to the laboratory… acquaint him with Bran and Sam.” 

“Ma’am,” Tyrion replied with a nod. 

“Brother,” she said, managing a few shaky steps to take one of his hands in both her own. “I am sorry… for deceiving you.”

She wanted to say more… _needed_ to say more, but just couldn’t. She felt herself wobble and Jon was there, as always, within a heartbeat. 

And with one last, lingering look, Jon escorted her from the waiting room, leaving her brother astonished and wordless in their wake. 

As they walked (to where she did not know and did not much care), she tried to muster up the mental fortitude to say… something. Anything really. To apologize, mostly. She had so many things to apologize for. 

But, instead, she remained silent and sullen, walking numbly under his arm. 

Eventually, they came to a barrack’s door and any question as to where they were was soon answered when the door slid open and an enormous white dog came bounding up to meet them. 

“Down, Ghost,” Jon scolded as he gently urged her into his room. She blinked, as if waking up from a slumber, looking around. It was sparse, to say the least, the only sign that anyone at all lived here being the sneakers placed neatly by the immaculately made bed, and the battered metal water bottle plastered with stickers of all assortments and varying degrees of degradation sitting on the nightstand. 

She should be embarrassed, being in his room like this. It was a blatant breach of protocol, if nothing else, but she did not have the energy to care much. 

Jon’s oddly silent and seemingly perceptive dog trotted up to her, sniffing at her hands. “Hey there, buddy,” she croaked. She knelt down next to him, suddenly eager for the warmth and comfort of an animal’s company. She curled her fingers into his snowy coat and pressed her face into his neck, the feel of his fur on her cheeks simply divine after everything she’d been through. 

“Figured Ghost would be helpful,” Jon observed from somewhere above her. She looked up at him, returning his pleased smile best she could. “He always helps me,” he said, kneeling down as well, scrubbing Ghost on the head lovingly. 

“Thank you,” she told him, voice just above a breath. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to fully convey her gratitude, right now.

He looked to the floor, something in his posture turning uncomfortable, awkward. “So… I was thinking—“

“Jon, I’m sorry,” she cut across him, not able to withstand his… everything any longer. “I’m sorry for everything… for bringing you here, for involving you as I have… for my brother. For… Winterfell.” 

His eyes darkened, brows slanting in pain, but his mouth curled up at the corners. 

She felt the tears coming again, looking at him looking at her like that, as if she were being the silliest little girl alive for thinking such things. She swallowed. “I never knew… the bomb.”

He shook his head, dark eyes over bright. “Dany…”

She sucked in a breath and it came out something like a laugh. “It’s funny…” she managed, voice a tremulous, shaky thing. “I usually hate it when people call me that. Even my brother.” She couldn’t really articulate why she liked it when he said it so much… or maybe she was just too embarrassed to admit what she really felt, even to herself. 

He smiled, looking away, something within the gesture confident, knowing.

He sighed and brought himself back to his feet. She felt dejected, for a moment, before his hand entered her field of vision, fingers flexing by way of invitation. 

She looked up at him and his expression was the same she had glimpsed after their first spar, after she had to explain to him how fucked up she really was. 

_No hard feelings._

She took his hand and he hoisted her up, gently walked her back until the backs of her knees hit the edge of his narrow bunk. She sat down obediently, trying very hard not to think of how… suggestive this move might have been if circumstances had been _just a bit_ different. 

He knelt by her feet, clicking off the acrylic clasps of her Valyrian armor boots. “Gotta get you out of this,” he muttered as he pulled off the first boot. 

She nodded, going to assist him, but suddenly realizing that she couldn’t really remember how. 

He seemed to sense this, of course, for he took up her hand in his own and guided it to the clasp, helped her hook her fingers under it and nudged upwards. She got the gist and pulled, the clasp coming away with a ‘click’. 

Then it came flooding back to her and she began detaching her vambraces, tugging off her pauldrons. Jon stood back and watched her, his eyes shining with approval. She smiled at him as she handed him her armor piece by piece. 

Armor shucked and safely stowed away in as neat of a pile as it could be on top of his dresser, she sat on his bed in her Dragon Scale suit, feeling oddly weightless without the heft of the steel on her body. 

“Shower,” he instructed, waving his hand to the little door at the back of his room while clutching a neatly folded towel. “Make you feel better.” 

She took the towel he offered her and watched as he dragged the stool from his desk to just outside the bathroom door and took a seat. He leaned his shoulders back against the concrete wall and gestured to the door again.

 _I’ll be right here_ , he seemed to say. 

She was becoming unnervingly attuned to the strange, wordless language that Jon Snow seemed to communicate in. 

She peered at him, her heart doing something rather queer in her chest. Jon Snow could’ve been anyone… a downright scoundrel, an arrogant shit head, a drunken fool. Any of which he would’ve more than earned the right to be, considering his history. And she would’ve been stuck with him, regardless. Made to ride out the terrifying wake of this bad Drift with someone who hovered too much or too little. Someone who was crass, cold, inept, or all three. Someone who would just barely endure the uncomfortable circumstances in order to win back some glory for himself. 

But instead he was just… Jon. 

“Have you had to do this before?” she asked him.

“Aye,” he answered. 

She looked down at her hands, curled over the gray towel in her lap. “I’m sorry—“

“Please don’t say that again,” he cut across her, the firmness in his voice making her look up in surprise. “A bad Drift is nothing to be sorry for or ashamed of… it’s like apologizing to a storm after it destroys your bloody house.” He leaned his elbows on his knees, his expression pleading, open. “I’ve been right where you are now. I know how bloody awful it feels.”

Her shoulders twitched and she nodded, though she couldn’t feel comforted. Not while her insides still squirmed with shame. “I just… I did so much work, Jon. Making sure nothing like this would ever happen. And I just… failed.”

The next thing she knew he was kneeling beside her, his thumb under her chin so he could look her in the eyes. “Our first Drift was bad, aye, as most are,” he began and Dany felt herself shiver, his voice was so dark with finality. “But I would’ve never found you in there if we weren’t Drift compatible.” He took her hand in his own, squeezed, reassuring. 

“I never wanted you to go through that again,” she whispered wretchedly, the true root of her distress slowly revealing itself as his voice and his touch eroded everything else away. 

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so he simply wrapped his arms around her, and they sat in a heavy silence for a time. She took in his scent, nose tucked into the cook of his neck. Surrounded by concrete and chrome, and Jon Snow still somehow smelt of the wild, the North— snowmelt and woodsmoke. 

He leaned away from her, pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and the intimacy of the moment fully struck her, as he looked at her as if memorizing her… eyes tracing over the lines of her face, her neck. “You’ve done more to protect people— to protect _me_ — than I could ever hope for, Dany,” he intoned sadly. “It’s my turn, now. It’s what copilots do for each other.” He brought himself to his feet, brushed a hand over the crown of her hair before pointing to the bathroom door again. “Shower.”

The warmth that suddenly bloomed in her chest was real and bright and blazing and she watched him return to his post outside the bathroom door. 

“Sure thing, Ranger,” she told him, her smile true and painful as she brought herself to her feet and shuffled to the door. 

+++

He breathed out, long and slow, as he heard the spray of the water against the tile. 

Ghost whined at his elbow and Jon reached out to stroke his ears. “I know, buddy, I know.” 

Ghost simply cocked his head at him and Jon sighed again, leaning his elbows on his knees.

He wasn’t sure how much of this he’d be able to withstand. It was as if he were trying to climb up a sand dune… the more he dug his heels in, the further and further he sank. 

The harder it was to come back.

It was one thing to be Drift compatible with your brother— a blood relative who shared much of your same trauma and pain, who loved you almost unconditionally. Had known you all your life. Knew what to expect. 

It was also one thing to journey into the Drift with a _stranger_. For him to not only navigate the fields of their past as they wandered in the Drift together, but for them to venture into his own.

And then there was the fact that it was her, and it was a thought too mortifying to contend with.

He swallowed, shook his head. _Get a grip._

He could not think of all that now. She needed him, his weird feelings and desires notwithstanding, and he’d be there. 

Desperate for distraction, he decided to take his own advice and began clicking and pulling off his own armor, shucked off his Dragon Scale suit, and stood before his dresser wondering what he should put on. PJs? Would she want to go to sleep? Or should he put some jeans on in case she wanted to walk around a bit?

So lost in his indecision, he jumped when he heard the door behind him creak open. 

“Jon?”

He didn’t know if he had ever pulled a pair of boxer briefs on so quickly, coming to the sudden and mortifying realization that he was a naked as his nameday in the middle of his room. He was a bit embarrassed at his lack of grace in this particular situation, to be honest. It had been a very long time since he had had a naked woman in his room, even if this time it was under the most professional of situations.

“What’s up?” he called back to her, his voice not as steady as he would’ve liked. 

“I uh…” she began awkwardly. He took a few steps to his right, needing to see her face, make sure she was truly alright, despite the fact that she had obviously cracked the door for some privacy… and that he was still, ostensibly, half-naked. 

She was standing there just inside the threshold, enshrouded in mist with a towel wrapped around her glistening shoulders. He felt himself flush and he instantly stepped back to where he had been. 

“I don’t have any clothes to wear.”

 _Fuck._ He nodded, as if she could see him. “I’ll find you some,” he told her and began rifling through his dresser drawers. He pulled out the softest tee shirt he could find… a ratty ‘The Night’s Watch’ tour shirt that she would undoubtedly tease him for, and a pair of basketball shorts that he refused to think of how she would keep on, as they were assuredly much too big for her. 

Clothes clutched in his hand, he passed them to her as discreetly as he could. She thanked him and closed the door again and he returned to the task of dressing himself. 

She emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, her hair twisted up in a towel, the stretched out neck of the shirt he had given her exposing one of her shoulders, and the shorts rolled up so many times at the waist it looked like she was wearing a utility belt. 

“Stop,” she whined immediately as he tried to school his face, and failed. 

That adorable reaction only made him snort with laughter and she pouted at him, her nose scrunched and lip poked out. 

The whole picture was… devastatingly cute. 

Could someone be devastating and cute? If anyone could, It was Daenerys Targaryen, he mused. 

But, it was also the first time she had come anywhere close to nearing the realm of happiness or normalcy since he had pulled her out of The Drift, so he couldn’t resist drawing it out as much as he was able. 

“Daenerys,” he began in innocent curiosity, “I didn’t know you were a carpenter.” 

“Oh shove it,” she groused. “It’s not my fault you have huge hips.” She hooked her thumb through the waistband, tugging at it where there was still room to give.

His eyebrows shot up at that. “Not sure how I should take that.” 

“Don’t you know?” she asked archly as she padded over to his bed and perched herself on the edge of it. “Broad hips are very desirable in men.”

“Guess I’ll take it as a compliment then,” he mumbled and came and sat down next to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” she answered warmly, giving him a smile that he didn’t know he deserved. 

And there it was, settling itself much too deeply within that silence that lived between them just then. A deep-seated contentedness. A comfort that was warm and real and something he had never quite felt before. 

His first instinct, as with most everything else in his life, was to push it away, to mend and tend to such a vulnerability like the wound it was. Especially in this context— feelings should not and _could not_ be nurtured between copilots, a relationship that, before, was strictly professional in his mind. 

Except, that wasn’t really true, was it? His first copilot had been his brother. A different type of relationship, to be sure, but one that was far from professional, at the end of the day. 

Maybe _that_ was what made Drift compatibility possible. That mysterious factor that no one could really quantify. Even someone as brilliant as Dany had come close, maybe, but he strongly suspected that she hadn’t considered… that. 

He stroked her shoulder, meaning it as a simple comfort before he ventured out to try to find them some food, but she seemed to melt at his touch and fell into his side with sigh. He hesitated for only a moment, before he let his cheek rest on the crown of her hair, circled his thumb over the cap of her shoulder. 

They stayed like that for quite some time.

+++

When she woke up, she became aware of many, very confusing things at once. 

_”Class Four Walker,”_ came the cool, detached voice of the AI. _”Mayday, mayday… Class Four Walker. T-minus 4 hours to landfall.”_

Second, she was drooling decidedly un-prettily onto a very firm and very warm chest, luckily garbed in a black tee. 

“Jon!” she cried as she came to full, clear awareness. 

He had stirred just at the same moment she had, scrambling up from the bed with a curse. Shit… they were in his room. Why were they in his room? Last she remembered they were strapping into Balerion…

Oh.

Her memory was falling in behind, slowly but surely, as her brain tried to catch up with the present: the blinking red glare of the alarm system and the angry call of the klaxon.

 _”All Dragon Pilots to respective Bays,”_ the AI instructed calmly. _”Mayday, mayday…”_

Jon was yanking off his shirt, shoving his feet into his bodysuit, muscle memory seeming to take hold. 

She sat stunned and, if she were being honest, scared shitless on the bed. Not knowing what to do or where to go. She had just been plucked from a bad Drift… had endured a trauma that was still fresh… a disappointing setback that should surely mean sitting this one out.

Right?

Jon turned back to her, zipping up the front of his suit. He inclined his head to the bathroom. “Suit’s in there,” he told her, snatching up his Valyrian boots from the floor beside the dresser. 

“Jon…” she said, a bit breathless, a bit lost. She shook her head, not knowing what else to say. 

He halted in his progress and looked up at her. Whatever he saw spurred him to action because he crossed the room and over to her within a breath. He cupped her cheek in his hand. 

“How do you feel? Really?”

She swallowed, looked to the floor, to her hands. She flexed her fingers. They were there and real and solid. She looked back up at him, her copilot, his jaw clenching in determination, eyes depthless with a trust and knowing she could not rebuke. 

She swallowed, stood, and pressed her mouth to his. 

It was brief, chaste, and she stepped away from him before he could unlock his limbs and pull her in closer, as she knew he wanted to do. 

Later, she decided. 

For now, they had work to do. 

+++

Gods, this was madness. 

But he’d never felt so sure about something in his life. 

He watched as Daenerys adjusted her grip on the controls, as the techs double checked her leads and fastenings. She looked equal parts scared shitless and unshakably determined. 

They were one team of three that were ready to be deployed, as the other recruits had yet to Drift. Jaime and Cersei Lannister in their golden Kingslayer and Theon and Yara Greyjoy in their black Kracken. They had been flown out already, dropped in two miles out to stop the Walker before it could find the shore. Him and Dany were being deployed as a last resort— the pilot team that had only Drifted once and it had ended poorly, to say the least. But they were still the last line of defense in case the bastard slipped through. 

They did not speak as they pulled their helmets on, simply giving each other reassuring looks and then Jon was falling forward again, into the warm blue rush of the Drift. 

He caught sight of a little girl crying over a torn dress, blond hair all mussed as if she had fallen, him and Robb returning victorious from a mission, him and Dany sitting across from each other on a work bench as she threw her head back and laughed at some terrible joke he had just made. 

And then he was on solid ground again and he blinked his eyes open, looking around in momentary panic. 

_”Neural handshake complete.”_

Daenerys was smiling at him, so thoroughly pleased and triumphant he couldn’t help the bright, happy laugh that escaped his chest. 

_”How do you feel?”_ he asked her through the Drift. It was an odd sensation, having been out of practice for so long. 

_”Weird,”_ she answered, _”but good.”_

“Everything looks good to go up here,” came Missandei’s voice through their comms. “How are you two doing? Better than last time it looks like.”

“All clear,” Jon called back, the adrenaline really starting to hit him now. He flexed his hands on his controls, his nerves tingling with anticipation. 

“Good… standby while we check on the other Units.”

After a few moments, the massive doors of the machine bay were crawling open, the lashes of rain turning into silver thread under the floodlights. They lurched forward and rolled slowly out of the bay on the massive platform under Balerion’s feet. 

“How we feeling, folks?” The unmistakable crow of Jaime Lannister sounded in his ear as he and Dany marched their Unit to their position in Blackwater Bay. “Sorry to disappoint, Snow, but it looks like you’ll just be standing around to look pretty for this one.”

“Sound awful confident for a team that needs a couple of rookies as a back up plan,” Dany shot back.

“We might not need the rookies, Lannister, but you’re still going to need us,” Yara Greyjoy was quick to point out. 

“That’s the bloody White Wolf you’re talking to,” Theon’s voice cut in, “He’s got more kills than all of us combined.”

“Will you all shut up?” Cersei snapped. “I think I see it.”

The comms cut out and Jon and Dany waited, the tide lapping at Balerion’s knees, the wind groaning through every nook and cranny of their Unit’s armor. Time seemed to slog by, and they both grew nervous and restless with every passing moment.

“Fuck that thing is fast!” Theon’s voice cut back in over the comm. “Team Balerion, heads up… it’s headed your way.”

“Couldn’t get a hold on it,” Jaime added, panting, “be fucking careful, Snow, Targaryen.”

They exchanged a look, bracing themselves. 

“Tyrion,” Dany called over the comm, “can you get a visual on it?”

“Negative,” he replied, sounding aggrieved. “It’s like a ghost.”

“There! There!” Jon cried in warning. 

And there it was, a slithering, low-slung creature, glowing and deadly beneath the waterline. 

“Jon!” Dany called and he looked where she was pointing on the screen. It was a cargo ship, moored at a dock behind them. 

He smiled at her and they plucked the vessel from the water.

“It’s fast,” Tyrion told them in a rush over the comm. “Watch out for the tail… it’s like a club. And we think it might—“

But the rest of his intel was cut short. _”NOW!”_ Jon bellowed.

They braced up, swinging the ship like a club up and then building momentum by bringing it back down in a screaming arc, slamming the hull of the vessel into the monster’s flat, scaly head just as if pounced from the water. 

The demon screeched, swatting at its face with its clawed feet. They swung again, catching it under the chin and it fell back into the sea with a wail. They stepped forward to come back down with the ship clutched in both hands, both of them screaming with the effort. The beast was ready for them this time, catching the ship within its strange, petaled jaws. 

They struggled, the Walker wriggling and jostling them until they had been forced to face the city. “Push!” Jon cried and they grunted as they shoved forward. The beast choked, gagged, shrieked in anger. 

“Fuck!” 

The hull of the ship was melting away, the blue glow of the demon’s maw showing through the iron fuselage, acrid plumes of steam frothing from the seams of metal. 

With a mighty clash, the ship broke apart under Balerion’s hands and the creature roared in triumph, its alien, stalked eyes glowing and devilish through the thrash of the rain. 

Before they could react, the Walker’s tail whipped out, clubbing them across the chest with such force they fell back into the water with a tremendous crash. 

“Damnit!” Dany snarled as they righted themselves, watching as the beast disappeared into the spired landscape of King’s Landing. 

“Tyrion,” Jon shouted into the comms as they walked their way out of the bay and into the city. “You got eyes on the bastard?”

“It went north,” he answered. “About three clicks. But look out, it’s—“

“Fast, yeah, we know,” Jon finished for him. 

They stalked through the thankfully empty streets, the financial district all but deserted. 

“Remember, no weapons while in the city,” Tyrion warned them unnecessarily. 

Jon and Dany exchanged significant looks, knowing how crucial it was to keep weapons’ use to a minimum while in the streets in order to minimize loss of life, but it only made their job all that much harder. 

“Where the hells did it go?”

Just as the words had left Dany’s mouth, Jon shouted out in warning, but too late. The creature came bursting through an office tower to their left, the wall of sleek glass windows shattering in a shower of silver gilt. 

It caught the Balerion’s helm in its claws, but they were quick to react, uppercutting the beast in swift measure. It squealed, claws scraping against the breast plate, desperate for purchase. They swung again, but the thing was too quick, ducking under their fist. 

It came up behind them, clutching Balerion’s shoulders in its claws as it swung them into building after building, each blow knocking them violently, shaking him to the roots of his fucking teeth. 

The thing got too fucking cocky, though, getting caught up in its enthusiastic show of violence. It stumbled as it pushed them clear through another office tower. The building came crumbling down behind them and the Walker shook its head, opening its glowing jaws. 

“Go for its throat!” Jon yelled and they thrust an arm forward. Balerion’s fingers closed on the creature’s thorny tongue before the beast could loose a jet of its venom.

“I got it!” Dany cried, lifting the other arm to strike as the creature writhed and slipped in their grasp. 

But her blow was interrupted by the beast’s tail striking out, coiling tightly over Balerion’s arm. 

“Fuck!” she cried. 

“I got it!” Jon gritted out, straining under the effort to keep the beast in his grasp. He lunged forward, smashing a button the console between them. 

_”Venting coolant,”_ the AI warned. 

“You fucking idiot,” Tyrion cut in. “You do realize that your Unit will meltdown without—“ 

The comms cut out under the force of the beast’s roar of anguish, its flailing tail slowing and crusting over frost until it shuddered to a sickening halt. 

“Now!” Jon shouted and Dany flexed Balerion’s arm, bringing it down in a sudden, swift blow that sent the tail bursting into hundreds of pieces, flying apart in fury of steam and ice. 

Dany whooped in triumph and brought Balerion’s newly freed arm down to hook its fingers into one of the demon’s four gaping jaws as it cried out in agony. With a grunt, they both hauled back and the jaw tore off with a sickening squelch, blue, radioactive blood poring from its hellish mouth. 

It screeched, becoming enraged, and lunged for them, but they were too fast, grabbing onto one of the beast’s horns and swinging, both of them crying out with the effort of it. The monster left their grip, the momentum too much, and it crashed into a tower in a fall of glass and sparks. 

“Damnit,” Jon panted. _Didn’t know our own strength._

Before they could fully recover, the monster reappeared, pouncing on their back from the wreckage with its hind legs like a martial artist striking out with an expertly placed kick. 

Balerion crashed to the street, asphalt and concrete and dust clogging the air. The beast tightened its grip, curling its claws deeper into the fuselage. Jon heard the awful and all-too familiar sounds of screaming metal as the Walker roared out in triumph above them. 

He and Dany flailed, both still a bit stunned from the fall. They reached Balerion’s hands up to claw at the Walker’s face, but to no avail. The creature screeched in fury and spread its forelimbs out. 

“Shit…” Jon breathed. 

The fucker had _wings_.

With a mighty flap, the beast was slowly raising them up in the air, higher and higher, clearing the tops of the skyscrapers and taking them away from the city. 

Alarms were beeping all around them, vital systems either in free fall or already redlining. 

“We gotta go, Dany, “Jon called over to her, eyeing the escape pod behind them.

She shook her head, her arm flexing. Oxygen was dropping, their breath starting to plume before them. His vision was already growing narrow and swimmy. They wouldn’t last much longer. 

_”Oxygen Level: 18 percent.”_ the AI warned. 

“Get the fuck out of there!” Tyrion’s garbled voice came over the staticky comms.

“Dany!”

_”Dark Sister, deployed.”_

“Hold it for me!” 

Jon blinked, brain already growing sluggish, and watched as the outline of a sword etched itself on the console in front of them, blinking green and ready to go. He nodded, some of the stupor leaving him as he realized what she was planning. He swung Balerion’s arm out and up, the effort tremendous against the low oxygen and the temperature. His fingers curled over one of the beast’s horns and he yanked its head down, crying out with the exertion. 

The fucker screamed in fury, shaking its head to be rid of him, but Jon held on as they were knocked off balance and began to tumble. Falling and falling like a meteor. 

“Do it!” Jon screamed and Dany answered. 

With a bestial yell, Dany thrust the sword through the Walker’s neck and swung until all Jon was holding was a head, loose from its shoulders. 

The monster’s claws relaxed and then they were falling in earnest, hurtling back to the earth. 

Alarms blared, lights strobed, and their harnesses shook them like rag dolls. The G forces were locking them both in an unforgivable trap of inertia. 

He reached his hand forward, straining for the console, the effort taking every last drop of power left to him. The horizon spun and spun through the helmet’s shielding. Dany was just barely conscious, holding onto her harness in desperation. 

With one last push, he smashed his fist on the fuel release button with a roar of pain. 

The pull back was almost intolerable, the Wildfire turbine in Balerion’s chest venting all of its considerable power in one tremendous blow. His head lurched back as their momentum was violently interrupted, slung upward as if they’d been fired from a sling shot. He gritted his teeth, bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, trying with all his might to stay conscious. 

They finally equalized, and it was if they’d emerged from a black hole, the event horizon spitting them back into the void on the other side. He and Dany both gulped in air like landed trout.

“You… okay?” Jon asked through his panting.

“Yeah,” she breathed back.

“You can’t do that for very much longer,” Tyrion chirped, voice garbled through the damaged comms. “You’ve already used half your coolant. If you—“ 

Jon released his hold on the button, answering Tyrion’s fretting before he could even finish.

He knew they couldn’t use the fuel release all the way back to terra firma, but at least now they were the right side up, no longer in a spinning free fall that would unquestionably result in a fatal landing.

He looked over to Dany and she nodded, looking like she was close to throwing up, but determined all the same. They both took up wide, bracing positions and waited. 

Jon hovered a finger over the fuel release button. He had to time the final pullback just right, or Balerion would resemble something like a crushed tin can and him and Dany would be lucky to come out the other side with only broken legs.

Their momentum picked up, the equipment rattling and groaning under the strain as they fell and fell. The AI called out multiple dire warnings: _”Elevation falling”, “Coolant low, emergency shut down in T-minus one minute”, “Fuel low, operations failing”._

Jon could just see the ground rushing up to meet them through the windscreen and he closed his eyes. “NOW!” he cried in alert to Dany. 

He slammed the button again and they jerked upward with less force than before, but just enough.

They touched down in a soccer field, right outside the city, the whole stadium flying apart under the force of their landing. Smoke and dust rushed up and out in a giant plume. 

And when he looked over, Dany was panting, sweat beaded on her face, but she was smiling. 

And damnit, he was too. 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, you guys! the response to part one of this crazy yarn really was more than i could've hoped for! thank you so much for that! <3
> 
> hope y'all like this monster of a chapter. i'm pretty proud of it myself. and i hope some questions some of you had last chapter will have been answered here. 
> 
> again, thanks to the _amazing_ [justwanderingneverlost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justwanderingneverlost/pseuds/justwanderingneverlost) for the mood boards. and! to [hardlyfatal](https://archiveofourown.org/pseuds/hardlyfatal) for her own, unsolicited and beautiful graphic to go along with it. SO PRETTY!!!!
> 
> let me know what you think! and come say hi [@frostbitepandaaaaa](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/frostbitepandaaaaa)!
> 
> (PS: chapter provided by the "TRON: Legacy" soundtrack. give it a listen.)


	3. ACT III, PART 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He turned away from her, her gaze too much to take in. He looked to his booted feet as his heartbeat leveled out. She had somehow seared some sort of promise into him the moment she had turned away from him in the hall, had sent him on his ass in the sparring room, had looked at him over the green glow of formaldehyde. 
> 
> Had kissed him right before marching off to battle. 
> 
> He felt a burning, nervous energy race through him at that memory… so brief and delicate it was as if he had dreamed it. He needed to ensure its permanence… to determine that he accurately remembered the texture of her lips, had rigorously recorded the scent of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is FINALLY done, but is a monster. i broke it in half. the second half is done, but needs some polishing. i **PROMISE YOU MY DEARS IT WILL BE OUT TOMORROW NIGHT!!!!**

_ACT III, PART ONE_

“You crazy bastards!” someone’s voice was calling through the crackly comms. He thought it might’ve been Jaime Lannister. 

“Everyone okay?” Tyrion cried out, voice shaky with concern. “Jon? Dany?”

“We’re okay!” Dany yelled back, still grinning like a fool and he found that he was, too. 

They were both panting, and the glow of their triumph made him dizzy. He laughed weakly and tried to gather his wits. He flexed his fingers, curled his toes within his boots— ensuring their reality, bringing him back to earth. 

It’d been ages, seemingly, since the last time he had basked and preened in the glow of a post-battle victory, to be sure, but couldn’t remember feeling like… _this_. With him and Robb, there was always a flush of accomplishment… a sense of a job well done. 

But this feeling had a dangerous edge to it… there was a power between them, burning and boiling like a star, emerging from a gauzy, unknowable ether. And when their eyes met, he couldn’t help but think that she felt it, too.

He had to look away, but was promptly distracted. “Dany, look!” he instructed breathlessly, pointing to the monitor displaying views from multiple angles around Balerion’s head. The holographic screen was warbling and blinking in front of them, straining to stay alight. On one of the screens was a great, scaly head, jaws slack and agape, languishing in a radioactive slurry of blood and venom, not a few dozen yards away. 

Encased in that gruesome head was the brain they required, the key to all the questions that still needed answering, all of the missing pieces that still needed to be found. 

Dany emitted a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and whoop, and Jon felt his chest cinch up at the joy that laid within it. They had done it. She had entrusted him with this very perilous and very imperative mission and he had gritted his teeth and stepped back into the flames and thorns of his well-forgotten past and he’d emerged triumphant, with her right there with him. 

“Okay, you two stay right where you are… I’m sending Jorah to go get you,” Tyrion’s voice intruded into his fog of elation. “Best not try to walk Balerion back in his current condition. We’ll haul him in later.”

“Tyrion,” Dany called back, “tell Bran he has his brain.” 

There was a beat of silence before Tyrion replied. “Good fucking job you two.” His voice was tight with emotion.

She grinned, biting her lip, and Jon saw her eyes grow bright. Gods, was she really going to fucking cry? If she did, there’d be next to no hope for him. 

She looked back to Jon and his smile hurt him, his chest aching at the expression on her face. He hadn’t seen that kind of naked joy and hope on anyone in a very, very long time. 

And damnit all if he could _feel_ it, too, a very binding and ruinous hope transmitting within the circuit they’d built and labored over the past few days, now tried and tested and baptized in the blue blood of their first Walker kill. 

When Jon had first arrived at Dragon Pit Base, he’d been so throughly jaded by the cynical, cataclysmic condition of the world they lived in, he hadn’t been certain if there was any amount of explanation or compensation that would have convinced him to stay, to actually _commit_. He’d come here out of a simple boredom, a morbid curiosity, an idle contemplation of his own mortality. And now, he was here in a Dragon Unit, tethered in the strange, powerful pull of the Drift with Daenerys Targaryen. 

He turned away from her, her gaze too much to take in. He looked to his booted feet as his heartbeat leveled out. She had somehow seared some sort of promise into him the moment she had turned away from him in the hall, had sent him on his ass in the sparring room, had looked at him over the green glow of formaldehyde. 

Had kissed him right before marching off to battle. 

He felt a burning, nervous energy race through him at that memory… so brief and delicate it was as if he had dreamed it. He needed to ensure its permanence… to determine that he accurately remembered the texture of her lips, had rigorously recorded the scent of her.

“Ready?” he asked her as he lifted his hands to his helmet. He tried to sound as normal as possible, and not as though he was on the verge of flying apart at the seams if he wasn’t able to touch her within a few moments. 

She nodded and with a synchronized count to ‘three’ they lifted their helmets off their heads. Dany gasped in shock, having never left the Drift peacefully before. Jon gave her an encouraging look. Leaving a good Drift was quite like stepping from a nice, warm bath. He knew that her skin was prickling in gooseflesh under her suit, just as his was. 

Recovered from that brief but unpleasant sensation, he began detaching himself from his harness, muscle memory taking hold. It took longer than usual, as many of the leads and wires had been tangled in their fall. Jon, more experienced at disengaging with everything, came over to help her after he’d freed himself. He was very sure to explain every move he was making to her, pointing to where one lead came into her suit and what this button unlocked and so forth.

“This one is always tricky,” he said, kneeling at her feet with her achilles between his forefinger and thumb. “You have to kind of… pinch, and then lift…”

He helped her step out of the stirrups and then they were standing unencumbered on the cockpit floor and Jon leaned forward and kissed her without really much thought.

It wasn’t the fleeting, dry meeting of lips that they had shared back at his barrack. As chaste and perfunctory as that kiss had been, it had still been a deft clearing of the traps and pitfalls that he had assumed lived between them, being colleagues and copilots first and foremost. But she'd been the one to venture into that terra incognita and it was all he could do but follow her into the thicket.

He felt that same courage that had strengthened him then, before they had gone out into the unknown for the first time together, take hold now as he dared leaned closer, greedily took more of her breath into his own lungs. 

She was stiff with shock at first, but she eventually softened, turning pliant and warm within his arms and fed him a tiny moan that was enough to make him a bit dizzy. 

But, it was also a bit awkward, to be truthful. Their armor, though redesigned and sleeker than the earlier models, was still bulky enough to keep them oddly distant from each other, bumping into one another like toy cars. 

He spread his hand over the back of her head, fingers raking through her wild hair, and brought her more fully against him and _oh_ how he wished this fucking armor wasn’t between them… no matter how good she might look in it. 

He pulled away much too quickly for his liking, and seemingly for her own, but he had to stop. It was risky enough for him to do this here at all— it wasn’t as if there weren’t cameras in the cockpit. 

He cradled her head in his palms and brought her brow to his. Her pupils were blown, lips red and wet as she panted in recovery. The image and implication of her returned desire almost made him growl with satisfaction. 

Once, there had been a wolf that slumbered within him, languishing under his bones, only riled and rankled with proper and thorough provocation. _‘That old First Men blood,’_ Jeor used to mutter when his old commander would review him and Robb’s technique after a run. For a long time, he’d assumed that that wolf had been slain… or at least had withered away to skin and bone, fed only by ample whiskey and scraps of fear and hopelessness.

“Sorry,” he husked, smiling, not sorry in the least bit as he stroked a thumb over her temple. 

She laughed, curling her fingers over one of his hands at her jaw and a pulse of something much too powerful and perilous to be handled at present passed between them.

The sound of a helicopter approaching thankfully distracted them both.

They leaned away fro each other, smiles sad yet promising, and he and Dany opened the hatch. Fortunately for all parties, the rain had cleared. Jorah, being the deft pilot he was, was hovering expertly right outside the door… or at least as close as the rotors would allow. 

Dany’s eyes scanned the considerable gap between where they stood and where they needed to go. Her mental math obviously did not please her, because the color in her face fell and her shoulders sagged. 

“Don’t worry… I’ll throw you,” Jon called to her over the noise, unable to keep the tiny, amused grin from his face. 

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

He stepped closer to her as the door of the copter slid open and a dark-skinned man with the insignia of a CO of the Helicopter Corps on his jacket leaned out with his arms spread and ready.

“Don’t worry ma’am,” he shouted to Dany, “I got you!”

_Easy for him to say,_ Jon thought amusedly to himself as he observed the man’s harness and connector rope. Dany had no such luxuries and she glanced over the edge of the threshold apprehensively. She wobbled a bit, the height dizzying. He reached for her, steadying her by her elbows and bringing her back a few steps. 

“That was exactly what you _weren’t_ supposed to do,” he chided.

She swallowed, gritted her teeth. “Just do it,” she commanded him miserably. 

He inwardly laughed. She’d obviously not covered this maneuver in her training materials and he’d have to be sure to add that to the list. He’d done this at least three dozen times with his brother.

“One, two, three,” he counted down slowly as they canted back and forth in synch at the edge of the hatch. At ‘three’, he took hold of her at the waist and assisted her forward momentum as she jumped. 

The man in the copter caught her, but it was really more of a gentling of her fall than anything else. Jon followed, surprised and pleased at his grace, only needing the man to grab hold of his arm to steady him. 

“Welcome aboard, ma’am, Ranger,” Jorah Mormont greeted over the noise of the rotors from the cockpit as the helicopter edged away from Balerion and back to Base. 

“Thank you, Captain,” Dany returned, looking a bit green around the gills after her jump as she eased herself into the bench at the back of the hatch. The man who had helped them board handed them both a headset, mostly for the racket. 

“Thank you, Commander Grey,” Dany told the man as she pulled the headset on.

Jon settled in next to her as Grey crawled back into the cockpit with Jorah. He watched as Balerion shrank in the distance, glimmering like a scowling bronze memorial to long ago legend under the faint half-dawn. He felt a faint stab of remorse, leaving their new Dragon as they were. He knew that they’d send out a full heli-corps to retrieve the beast and haul him back to Base to undergo repairs. Jon didn’t know much about that process, to be honest, but he estimated Balerion could be back in commission in week or two. Or, so he hoped.

Because there was no way he was staying behind ever again. Not after what had happened. Not after what they had been able to do. 

He knew it was reckless to feel this confident, this invincible. They were at war, for all intents and purposes, against an enemy they knew very little about. But it was simply unthinkable to him to believe them less than anything but capable and lethal in the mightiest of ways. 

He leaned his head against the cool, metal wall at his back, eyes sliding closed. Now that he was out of their unit, and out of the Drift… he felt his strength waning, fatigue flooding in in the wake of his tapped adrenaline. His stomach turned, his skin grew clammy— the familiar Drift hangover inching up his spine.

He cracked his eyes open and peered over at Dany, knowing that she would probably be feeling the same. And indeed, she looked a bit sickly— pale, her mouth a thin line, a faint bloom of sweat over her cheeks. He squeezed her knee and she looked over at him in faint alarm.

“Good or bad, you’ll always feel it, after,” Jon assured her, his voice strangely breathy and not the least bit uncanny as it echoed through his headset… it was as if they were back in the Drift again. He smiled, knowing that she must be freaking out a bit, thinking that such a thing only ever happened after a bad Drift. “Gets better each time, but it’ll always be there.” 

She laughed weakly, seeming a bit stunned, for some reason. “Thank you,” she managed and there was something behind the shaky smile that she gave him that made him think she meant a lot more. She took up his hand on her knee in both her own and leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

He sighed in relief and leaned his head against the wall again and closed his eyes, reveling in the warmth of her pressed to his side. 

His weird, edgy energy had all but faded away as his body came to realize that the danger was done. She was all but boneless at his side, completely safe, and there was nothing much else that needed to be done. They’d won, and there had been no need for him to trek through the fires of his past to find her amid the rubble this time. It was over… at least, for now. 

But a drop in elevation brought him back to awareness almost as soon as he’d slipped into a fitful slumber, it seemed. He blinked, the sun having grown brighter even in the brief trip back to Base and glinting off the riveted steel floor of the copter. He leaned forward, peering out of the open hatch door to see a mob of people rimming the helipad below. 

Reporters.

_Shit._

He groaned and fell back in his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose. There were many, many things he had missed terribly about his days as a pilot, but the media was definitely not one of them. 

“What is it?” Dany asked creakily from beside him, stirring to wakefulness and leaning over him to see what had caused him such distress.

“Shit,” she muttered before he could answer, sitting up straighter and scrubbing her face with her hands to try to rouse herself further. 

“Yeah,” he groused, commiserate. At least they both had experience in this particular part of the job… though, he knew that she was a much more graceful navigator of the troublesome, thorny forest that was media attention.

She sighed heavily and closed her eyes in preparation as the helicopter touched down with nary a bump or jostle. Jon had to hand it to old Jeor’s son, he was one hell of a pilot. 

“I can handle it,” Dany offered, standing and brushing her hair from her face with her gloved hands. “It’ll be—“

“No,” he protested, “I can’t just feed you to those wolves.”

“They’re reporters, Jon, not wild animals.”

“Same difference,” he mumbled as he stood and hopped down from the helicopter. He turned and offered his hands to Dany who took them with a pointed look as he helped her hop down and back onto solid ground.

“Let me do this for you,” she hissed in his ear as the reporters pushed forward in a clamor. 

“Miss Targaryen! Miss Targaryen! Over here!” 

“Mr. Snow! Mr. Snow… Margaery Tyrell with _Crownlands Times_ … can you provide a statement—“

Dany simply transformed in front of him, her face breaking out into a huge smile, her spine ramrod straight and shoulders thrown back as she stepped into the throng in front of them as if she had been born into it. And, he realized a bit suddenly and very much belatedly, she had been, in a way. She was a Targaryen, the closest to royalty you could get in modern Westeros. 

He tried very hard not to think of that as he followed in her wake, staying close at her back to provide something of a breakwater between her and the mob of reporters as they closed in like a pack of starving vultures. 

Dany answered all the questions lobbed at them in the chaos in the briefest terms possible, though with more aplomb and grace than he could have ever conjured even during his and Robb’s best days. Jon stayed largely silent, only answering yes or no questions when Dany was otherwise occupied. 

They managed to push their way through the crowd in under ten minutes, Jon figured. It was made easier with the appearance of Tyrion, who, despite his diminutive stature, could be quite authoritative when warranted. 

“I think you all have gotten your photo ops and sound bites,” he called over the crowd as he took Dany’s hand and pulled her through the last— and most adamant— of the reporters. “Now, I’m sure you’ll understand that our brave Dragon pilots need rest!”

With that, they jogged to the massive bay doors and were finally free of the oppressive inquisition of the media.

“Forgot how much I hated that bit,” Jon grumbled as the doors shuddered closed behind them. 

“Well, you better get used to it White Wolf, because you two are going to be the only thing anyone talks about for the foreseeable future,” Tyrion declared proudly, looking between the both of them like they were his own, overachieving children. “You put on quite a show!”

“We didn’t put on a show,” Dany snapped back, aghast. “We fought a fucking Walker!”

“That you did, ma’am,” he replied, eyes twinkling and he rocked on the balls of his feet in delight. “That you did.”

“What are you so happy about?” Jon inquired, watching as Dany’s expression sharpened at her VP’s mystifying behavior.

“Well, you two, of course!” he cried, hands outstretched. “Do you realize what’s happened? You have re-legitimized the Dragon Unit program! The people love you already!”

Jon blinked and looked back to Dany, searching for a clearer explanation. 

“With the public support we can get more money,” she told him, tone cynical, but she smiled none the less. “More exposure… more support.”

Tyrion nodded, looking all the world as if he were going to float away on a cloud. His pleasure was contagious despite Jon’s soured mood. 

“With that in mind,” Tyrion chirped, turning away to lead them further into the base. “I think some celebration is in order.”

_“‘Celebration’?”_ Dany repeated, incredulous. “Tyrion… there’s still so much work to be done. It isn’t as if we’ve won the war.”

Tyrion halted, turned around and and cocked his head to the side as he considered her words with a frown. He glanced back up at her and waved a finger between the two of them. “Be honest,” he said, “when was the last time either of you had any _fun_?”

Jon and Dany shared a look and the silence was answer enough for Tyrion. 

“As I thought,” he affirmed with raised brows, turning on his heel to continue their journey. “We need to get you two examined first, of course, but then… then we can have a bit of a party.”

+++

The party was in full swing by the time she and Jon had arrived. 

In truth, it was less a party and more of a… rambunctious get together in the mess hall. Cold beer and cheap champagne were in abundance and music was supplied via a laptop plugged into the PA system. Tyrion was playing the part of DJ— which, in his mind, consisted of cherry picking the influx of requests he deemed up to his exceedingly high standards and ignoring the others. 

There was a great cheer when Dany and Jon walked in, turned over from their stellar medical examinations and fresh from their respective and much-earned naps and showers. Newly-minted pilots and engineers alike surrounded them to offer their admiration and gratitude. 

Despite Jon claiming clumsiness in the public eye, he seemed to ease into the adulation well enough, shaking hands and back slapping his comrades with a smile that made her stomach flip as they made their way through the crowd. Red plastic cups filled with a generous serving of champagne were pressed into their hands as Tormund launched into a roaring toast. 

“To the Dragon Queen and to the White Wolf, eh? What a hell of a show!”

“And to you all!” Dany had shouted in return over the din this proclamation had stirred up. “For finding your copilots! May you all have the same fortune as us!” 

“Here! Here!” came the response. She and Jon exchanged significant looks over the tops of their cups as they dutifully swigged the champagne, the heat in Jon’s eyes at her proclamation making her blush and cough. 

Currently, she was sipping the beer she had traded in for her warm and cloying champagne, roving her eyes over the crowd in what she hoped was a subtle way. She had been promptly whisked away by Missandei, Sergeant Stark, and Gilly, their head Medic. Jon summarily had been stolen away by Tormund, Jaime Lannister and the Greyjoys.

“What do you think, Daenerys?”

Dany blinked, focus readjusting, turning back to her knot of friends that she really should be tending to better than she was at the moment. 

“Hmm?” 

Arya, who had been the one to ask her the question that had pulled her back from her distraction, rolled her eyes. 

Dany _had_ been fascinated by Arya’s recounting of her own experience through the trial process and her… colorful assessment of her selected copilot (a young man from the Stormlands… Gendry, she though his name was), but she could not keep her mind from wandering, it seemed. 

She was standing on new ground now, after that searing kiss in the cockpit, and it wasn’t nearly as stable and solid as she would like.

“I think he went outside, boss,” Missy muttered in her ear. 

“What?” she asked dumbly. 

Arya was smirking at her much too knowingly and Gilly stroked her arm, eyes sympathetic but mouth up-turned in an amused sort of way. 

“Jon can never hang out for very long,” Arya supplied, looking at her watch. “He’s never been very good at parties… It’s been about an hour… he’s probably escaped to have a smoke.”

“I don’t know—“

“Just go,” Missy urged with a grin. “Fire escape’s that way.”

She decided it was pointless in resisting and excused herself to find her copilot. 

_Copilot_ … it still felt so… odd.

She could not pinpoint exactly _why_ she was so restless to find him. She had spent most of the past two weeks in his company, after all. But she couldn’t help the prickly anxiety under her skin at his absence. 

She had worked so hard for this, for so long, and now everything was falling into place in just the _right_ way. And so fucking _fast_. 

Perhaps _that’s_ why she felt such the need to find him. Soon, all the wheels would be turning even faster than they had been before, and she needed… some quiet with him. Some respite. 

She stepped onto the metal balcony of the fire escape and found him on the level below, his legs fitted through the metal slats of the railing, feet swinging as he puffed on a cigarette and watched the sun melt into the sea beyond. 

She climbed slowly down the stairs, suddenly reluctant to intrude on this peaceful scene, but it was fairly impossible as her heels were noisy against the metal and the heavy fire door groaned closed behind her. 

“Hey,” he greeted her with a smile, not perturbed in the least. He patted the platform next to him by way of invitation. “Grab a seat.” 

She was touched, being so readily welcomed into his seeming solitary vigil. She handed him her beer as she situated herself, pulling her expensive heels off before she pushed her legs through the slats and looked to the horizon.

“Wow,” she breathed in appreciation as he handed her beer back. 

“Yeah,” he replied, taking a swig of his own beer. “Didn’t know the place came with a view.”

It really was beautiful. The sunset poured marrow red over the sprawl of King’s Landing, blue shadows creeping long and spindly through the streets. And then, just below them, a black scar stretched from Blackwater Bay and into the Financial District, an ugly gash in an otherwise perfect landscape. 

She curled her fingers over the cold slats, almost feeling like she was on a swing, so high up in the air. 

“Feels familiar up here,” Jon observed, flicking away his cigarette prematurely, out of politeness, she guessed. “Not that I’d want to be back at the Wall.” 

She nodded, looking down between her feet, the height dizzying. She never realized how fucking high up this place was— most of the base was built right into a face of stone on Aegon’s Hill, but she’d never really ventured onto its extremities before. 

“Not as used to it as you are,” she muttered, looking back out to the ocean, to where the mighty cranes and derricks of the Blackwater Bay Wall now sat empty and idle against the dying sun. 

“Dany… I’ve been meaning to thank you.” 

She barked a laugh at that. “To thank _me_?”

He quirked a smile, the wind tossing his hair to and fro as he looked back out over the velvet landscape. “I was in a bad fucking place,” he admitted heavily.

Dany watched him as he looked down at his dangling, sneakered feet, squinting against the yellow sun that girded him in gold. This was candor he was unaccustomed to, she could tell by the lines deepening around his eyes, the sudden tension in his shoulders. 

“I’ll spare you the gruesome details,” he continued wryly, reaching for levity to push onward, “but I became so… used to that life. Not giving a single shit that I worked one of the most dangerous jobs in the world when I knew, in my heart, that the Walls would never work. What would it matter, if I just… slipped one day?”

Somewhere in the streets below, a siren wailed and Jon reached in his pocket for his smokes. She inwardly laughed, remembering him throwing away a half-smoked cigarette for sake of propriety. He struggled to light it, the wind persistent up here. She leaned forward and took the lighter from him and cupped her hands to shield the flame from the intrusive breeze. 

“Thanks,” he said as he took back his lighter. “And sorry,” he offered, lifting his cigarette by way of apology. 

She shook her head. “Can I have one?”

His eyes widened, but he pulled one out for her and returned the favor she had just done for him. It’d been years, but the lure of a nicotine high was suddenly too pleasant to ignore. 

He took a long draw, and continued: “Being here… meeting you… it’s like—” He shook his head, a line between his brows that she knew well. “It sounds fucking ridiculous but it’s like I got my life back. Like I was… dead and now…”

“You get to live again,” she supplied for him. 

He flashed a smile at her, switchblade quick. “Something like that.” 

“You may not believe it, but I can relate,” she told him, flicking the ash of her cigarette and leaning back on her palms. The ridges of the metal platform dug into her hands, but she didn’t mind. “After my brother was committed… I didn’t know how to move on. I didn’t know… what my _purpose_ was.”

Jon was looking at her thoughtfully from over his shoulder, his eyes seeming to unfold her pages and breakdown her cypher as deft as any codebreaker. “You were his engineer, weren’t you?” 

She nodded, not knowing how he knew this, but not surprised in the least that he had figured it out. It was sensation that she was fast becoming used to. 

“I threw myself into this,” she continued, flicking her head back in the direction of the base. “Mostly to distract myself, if I’m being honest. It wasn’t until we were able to recruit Bran, and then find you, that it really started feeling…”

“Real,” Jon provided gently, eyes cutting back up to hers, fond and knowing. 

She smiled, pushing herself back upright and leaning her shoulders on the slats, feeling oddly weightless, as if she were flying.

“Can I ask you something?” she began uncertainly. Jon simply looked at her, expectant. “I’ve always understood the Drift to be… a world of memory. A sort of tactile… consciousness.” He nodded in agreement. “So, when I was lost in Winterfell— when we first Drifted— was that… actually a memory? There’s no way you could’ve survived that, right?”

He heaved a sigh and looked away, his mouth a grim line. “It was a dream,” he answered heavily. “Or… a nightmare, rather.” He puffed on his cigarette, scratched his brow with the edge of his thumb, fidgety. “I’ve seen it so many times that it’s become a memory.”

She bit her lip, her heart throbbing painfully in her chest. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. 

He shook his head with a small, bitter laugh. “No, _I’m_ sorry,” he returned. “It’s my head you got stuck in.”

They sat in silence for a time, watching as the sun faded into the ocean, the lights of the city flicker on like watchfires beneath their dangling feet. 

“Why do you think we’re Drift compatible?” she inquired abruptly. It was a question she had turned over and over in her head like a coin, but had always meant to keep to herself— a subject of silent vigil and private, scientific rigor. 

But he was here, and she wanted to know what he thought. 

Jon blinked at her, faint lines of confusion forming around his eyes. “Aren’t you the one who knows all that?” 

She swallowed, looked down at her cuticles. “I could sit here and show you the data, the metrics… could try to explain the designs of the trials… but I want to know what _you_ think. Seeing as though… you were once Drift compatible with someone else.” 

He pulled his lower lip between his teeth, looking utterly perplexed by this question. “He was my brother.”

She nodded. “So, why would _we_ be compatible?” She shifted, leaning a bit closer for emphasis. “Why us and not, say, your sister?”

“What is this about?” he asked her, a bit rankled. “Are you… having doubts?” 

She shook her head. “No, no…” She dared meet his gaze, her breath shaky. “I’ve never been so sure about anything.”

He seemed frozen in place at that. His eyes were no more than dark embers in the dying light, hair tossed about like seaweed caught in a current. He really was beautiful, sullen and silent while he studied her, as if waiting for a trap. 

“For as long as I’ve been doing this, Jon, there’s always been this one, mysterious factor that I can’t seem to lay hands on,” she pressed on despite all her reservations, the lump forming in her throat. “It’s there, somewhere, within all those numbers and figures, but it’s fucking elusive. It never… coalesces into something that can quite be measured.” She felt her arms weaken, not entirely sure why she was doing this, but now that she had started she had to draw all that poison out before it was too late. 

“Missy showed me the stats after our run,” she admitted, voice frailer than she would like. “Let’s just say that they were… significant, Jon. And this…” she waved her hand between them both, “…is everything I could have ever hoped for, but now there is— there’s _more_ than that.”

He bit his lip, looking pained, his cigarette running into ash, unsmoked and forgotten between his fingers. He turned away, blinking against the wind. 

“If this is about the kiss, I’m— I’m sorry to have complicated things.”

She shook her head. “It _should_ have complicated things,” she countered firmly. “But it— well it only… made things more clear.” She ducked her head to catch his eyes, braver than she felt. “Did it complicate things for you?”

He smiled. “I was the one to kiss you,” he began, slow and sure. 

She warmed at that, something in his expression tempering her courage. “I kissed you first,” she pointed out.

His eyes softened at that and he laughed, pleased. He looked up, watching the stars wink into life among the deepening sky above them and they were silent, for a time. 

“I think… the answer that you’re looking for is something that we aren’t ready to hear yet,” he finally said, voice dark and soft, eyes meeting hers again. 

Her lungs emptied like a bellows, the careful non-answer a confirmation all the same. She closed her eyes, a tear leaking out despite her efforts. 

“But,” he continued, his fingers under her chin, so gentle she could really only feel the chill of them, all the warmth leaked away by the wind and encroaching night, “you shouldn’t be afraid. _We_ shouldn’t be afraid.” He pressed two fingers to his chest, moved them to point to her, then back to his chest. 

Something about the gesture was final. Binding. So very confident that it took the breath from her. 

She gasped, looked down at her hands, not able to tolerate his gaze any longer, but allowed him to pull her closer, his brow against her own as she struggled to steady herself. 

“I’m not afraid,” she whispered, voice a small thing, and tipped her mouth closer to his own. 

“I know,” he whispered back before closing the small space left between them. 

This time, there was no encumbrance of armor keeping them farther from each other than they would have wished. She was near shivering in the dying of the day but the heat of his mouth was enough to banish it forever. 

She fisted her hands in his tee, willing him— needing him— to be closer. He responded in kind, groaning as he bit down experimentally into her bottom lip. She gasped, shocked at his boldness, and he took her open mouth as invitation, pressing his tongue against her own. 

She let out a little whimper, raking her fingers through his hair, trying to match his hunger, his ferocity. 

They broke apart at the sound of the door above them creaking open, though neither of them went far, noses pressed together, breath mingling as they fought to fill their lungs. 

Their mystery intruder said nothing and they listened as whoever it had been stepped back inside, obviously regretting their interruption as the door groaned closed behind them. 

But the damage was done and the spell was broken. Jon tucked a hair behind her ear, rested a hand on her throat, his thumb floating over the line of her jaw. “Guess we should be getting back.”

She nodded, knowing he spoke the truth, but cursing it all the same. “I don’t want to.”

He chuckled. “Neither do I.”

She sniffed, tucked her face further into his neck. “We should go with the extraction team tomorrow. When they retrieve the brain.” She didn’t really know why she suggested it. There really was no reason for either of them to be there… but it felt right. For them both to witness the gathering of the treasure they had fought so hard to win. 

He nodded. “Aye, we should.”

Something about his tone, the way the word ‘we’ left his mouth sent a shiver through her. She leaned away from him, studying his face, taking in every detail she could discern in the russet haze of twilight. Jon Snow the ranger, the warrior— pared down to a man before her, willfully tangling his wires with her own.

There was nothing else for it, now. 

She smiled at him despite her racing heart, and pressed a kiss to his lips again before getting to her feet. “Come on, Ranger,” she said, holding out her hand. “It’s getting cold.”

+++

He was so very fucked. 

He had stopped caring pretty much the moment he had pulled her from her harness after their first, bad Drift. All that had mattered in those dizzying moments had been getting her back to solid ground, no matter the desires that had been reluctantly and dutifully fenced off by them both in the days prior. Those flimsy fences had since been torn down, it seemed, aided by both parties with seemingly equal relish.

But, it still didn’t change the fact that he was, indeed, fucked. 

He was watching her now, despite having other needs to tend to, as she directed techs and engineers in haz-mat gear. They were sawing through a skull as thick as as an iron beam, a feat that not many had attempted and so the logistics for such were quite mysterious. Even in such strange climes, even with her garbed in her own bulky suit, she was undeniably beautiful.

“I’ve never seen one so up-close,” Bran observed from beside him, breaking Jon from his spell. His little brother was watching the odd scene unfold in front of them in the sort of anticipation only a student of his field would be able to appreciate. “They’re even bigger than I thought.” 

“Aye,” Jon affirmed. “And they’re only getting bigger.” 

Bran peered up at him, the summer sun glinting harshly off his plastic visor. Just ahead of them, Sam was wandering about with a clipboard and a Geiger counter near the taped-off perimeter, muttering to himself as he ticked off numbers and observations. 

“I always knew you were brave,” Bran told him. “I just never realized how brave.” He nodded to the grisly scene in front of them. “To go out and face something like _that_ ….” He shook his head. “I couldn’t do it.”

Jon swelled at that, meeting his brother’s appraising gaze. “So are you, Bran,” he returned as he knelt by the arm of his chair. “You couldn’t pay me enough to Drift with a bloody Walker, but here you are… wanting to go even _further_ into the Drift with the thing.”

Bran grinned at him. “I can only theorize that it runs in the family.”

“Too bloody right,” Jon muttered as he caught sight of Arya marching toward them with an unfamiliar man at her side, as if on cue. “Sergeant,” he greeted. 

“Ranger,” she returned, red-faced and sweaty within her suit. It was not even midday but it was already sweltering and the bulk of the suits did nothing to help matters. “I want you both to meet my copilot.” She held her hand out to her companion. “This is Ranger Gendry Waters.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bran said with a smile as he shook the man’s hand. “Bran Stark, head researcher.” 

“Ranger,” Jon greeted curtly with a nod and firm shake of his hand as Gendry turned to him. The man returned it in kind, blue eyes meeting his confidently. Jon took him in with no small amount of suspicion… this person who would be fighting alongside his little sister. He felt his well-worn cynicism rear its ugly head, despite himself. 

“He have clearance to be here?” he asked Arya with a wave of his hand to the man in question. 

Arya quirked her eyebrow at him, unamused. “Do _you_ have clearance to be here, Ranger?” she spat back. 

_Fair enough_ , he thought to himself with a smirk. 

“It’s an honor, sir,” Gendry told him with a nod, taking up a parade rest pose, oddly. “I grew up watching you and your brother on TV.”

“Don’t ‘sir’, him, Ranger, you’re both the same rank,” Arya scolded. “And what are you doing at parade rest? Is he your commanding officer?” 

“No,” the man answered, taking Arya’s abuse with surprising grace. That was good, Jon decided as he watched him relax out of his parade rest. His little sister couldn’t pilot with someone with an ego. 

“When’s your first Drift?” he asked them both. 

“Later today,” Arya replied, eyes glinting with excitement. “Then we’ll see who’s the better team, big brother.” 

“It’s not a bloody competition,” Jon countered. 

“I’ve tried telling her that,” Gendry blurted with a laugh. 

Jon watched as Arya rounded on the man with a glare. Her new copilot obviously had little to no sense of self preservation, as well as little to no ego, and Jon couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. 

“Maybe it’s not a competition, _to you_ , Ranger,” Arya contested, waving a hand at Jon, “but this is my brother we’re talking about here. The White Wolf of Westeros… a hero who comes out of retirement and wins a great big battle right out of the gate… with the bloody _Dragon Queen_ no less!” She turned back to Jon and smiled at him, a bit wicked, but her eyes shone with pride and he allowed himself to bask in the glow of it, if only for a moment. “If anyone’s gonna bring him down a peg or two, it’s going to be me.” 

“Ah,” Gendry interjected, “don’t you mean _‘us’_?”

Arya scoffed and Jon grinned, the cocky young man in him seriously doubting his sister’s challenge, but loving her all the more for the clear ring of promise in her voice. “I’d love nothing better, sis.”

“That’s ‘Sergeant’ to you, Ranger,” she corrected sternly, though she was unable to fully banish the smile from her face. She eventually schooled her demeanor, posture stiffening and face turning grim, looking all the world like the sergeant she was. She inclined her head to a spot just behind their group. “Can I talk to you in private, Ranger?”

Jon looked at her in confusion… maybe even a bit fearful. “Uh… yeah, sure,” he answered and they trotted some paces from Gendry and Bran. 

“That was some incredible piloting, Jon,” Arya began without preamble as they slowed to a stop. Her words were complimentary, but her face and tone were deadly serious. “I’m not so sure you and Robb could’ve done better.” 

Jon scoffed at that. “Arya… that’s not a comparison you should make.”

She seemed to deflate a bit at that, her shoulders sagging. “I know,” she grumbled, scuffing her boot on the broken ground. “But Jon… what you and Daenerys did out there was really something.”

He nodded, his ears growing hot. “Aye, I know.” 

“I’m proud of you,” she said, voice a bit rough. “For… pulling through it and coming here. I know… I know it wasn’t an easy decision to make.” She looked at him, dark eyes fierce and vital, alive with something that had him opening his mouth to dismiss the mighty gift that she was trying to give to him with her words, but she continued on, swiftly and firmly… as if she knew that he would try to stop her. “You’ve done something… amazing here, Jon.” She glanced over her shoulder to where Dany was standing some yards away, head bent close to Missandei in some studious discussion. “And I’m… happy for you.” 

He wanted to ask her why, exactly, she would be happy for him in the way he strongly suspected she was happy for him. Wanted to go through the motions of maintaining strict professionalism, denying that he felt anything more than respect and admiration for his copilot, and to thank her for her exemplary assessment of his performance like any subordinate should give their commanding officer after such praise. 

But there was no question, no denying. Not with Arya, not with his dear little sister. 

He smiled at her, his heart overburdened with love. He would’ve hugged her, if they weren’t in these ridiculous suits. “Thanks, sis.”

“That’s Sergeant to you, Ranger,” she reminded him with a punch to his shoulder. 

He nodded toward Gendry, where he was chatting with Bran… or trying to at any rate. Bran was not exactly the loquacious type, and when he _was_ feeling social, he wasn’t typically exchanging ho-hum pleasantries. 

“What about him?” he asked her seriously. 

“He’s a good one, Jon,” she answered, grinning. “Only other man in this place that can knock me on my ass in a spar.”

Jon lifted his eyebrows. “And he’s still living? You must really like him, Stark.”

“Shut up,” she muttered, a tinge on her cheeks and they turned to rejoin the group. 

“Did our brother get you what you need?” Arya asked Bran as she came to stand beside him.

“Aye,” he replied, pointing to the excavation before them. “And I think the big reveal is about to happen. Look!”

Jon turned around in time to see techs scattering and Dany trotting up to join them. 

“Gotta blow it,” she puffed, “Skull’s too thick… saw keeps stalling out.”

“Won’t that damage the brain?” Bran asked her, alarmed. 

She shook her head. “Not the part we need… hopefully.” She looked back from where she came, waving at the various techs and engineers who were hunkering down. “Besides… these guys know what they’re doing. They laid down precise charges.”

Bran seemed worried, but Jon felt assured. Dany had sought out the best talent, in every aspect, it seemed. There was no reason to doubt her, now. Though, he was not thrilled by the potential of bits of flying Walker brain. 

They all turned to watch as the foreman of the extraction crew counted down over a megaphone. Sam rejoined their group, grumbling about something or another, having been shooed away by a tech. 

At the signal, there was a crackle, a hiss, and then a series of loud ‘pop’s. And then it seemed as though a door had simply opened up on the side of the beast’s scaly head and various sludge and connective tissues slid down and pooled around the jaw with a wet squelch.

“Gross,” Arya observed flatly. 

Various techs and engineers swarmed around the now exposed brain, gray and slimy in the harsh sun, to begin the final steps of the extraction process. 

“Can you manage from here, Sergeant?” Dany asked Arya.

Arya nodded and Dany turned to Jon, and he did not much like the look on her face. “Rhaegar wants to see us when we get back.”

She was quick to calm him before he could even start. “I don’t think we’re in for a scolding, Ranger. Quite the opposite… hopefully,” she ended quite ominously. 

Before he could really argue or protest, she was swept away by a team of engineers needing final instruction. She signed off on their plans and they made their way to the waiting helicopter to take them back to Base. 

+++

Her brother was predictably stiff and acerbic when they finally arrived. He stood from behind his polished desk, the afternoon sun slanting through the large windows at his back. His smile was tight as he waved a hand, inviting them to take a seat. 

As she had also assumed, Jon was equally cagey and prickly, sitting stiffly after a pointed hesitation. 

“Thank you for coming,” Rhaegar greeted as he settled back into his own chair. Dany perched nervously at the edge of her seat, glancing between her brother and Jon as if waiting for one of them to vault over the desk between them and start throwing punches. 

When Tyrion had come to her that morning with the news about Rhaegar wanting to speak— with them _both_ — she had pleaded reason. Firstly, how could her brother continue to doubt her and Jon now, after what they’d done? And second, how would it be productive for Rhaegar to call them both into his office for what she assumed would be a lengthy lecture? 

_“I assure you, Daenerys,”_ Tyrion had told her levelly, _“Rhaegar is, above all, a business man. I do not think he means to chide you like children.”_

“Ranger,” Rhaegar began after a tense silence, eyes squarely upon Jon, “I believe I owe you an apology.” 

Dany sat in her chair, limp and stunned. She turned and watched as Jon tried to contain his shock. He cleared his throat after a beat. “Thank you, sir,” he managed, “but I am a bit confused as to why you’re apologizing.”

“My behavior the other day was reprehensible,” Rhaegar went on, falling into his corporate habit of overstatement and carefully applied sincerity. “You are a soldier, and a good one at that. I should not have spoken to a man of such repute in that way.”

Jon clearly did not know what to say to this, and Dany gave her brother a suspicious look. Rhaegar was not a cold or cruel man by any means, but he also was not known to be… overly effusive. She couldn’t help but feel like they were being buttered up for something. 

“And Daenerys,” her brother said, turning to her, “I owe you an apology as well.”

She felt a bit sickened at this, knowing full well how their last exchange had ended, how she had essentially lied to her own brother for the better part of two years. “Rhaegar, that is unnecessary. I am the one who should apologize—“

He held his hand up, resolute. “You only did what you thought was necessary.” He managed a tiny smile. “I think you and I both know that I wouldn’t have let you do what you’ve been able to achieve had you been fully honest with me, and for that… I am sorry.” 

She was so touched that she found she couldn’t form words. Rhaegar sighed and stood from his chair, plucking a remote from his desk and turning on a panel of TVs on the wall to their right. Nine screens flickered to life, all displaying different newscasts: Sunspear and Braavos and Volantis and White Harbor— all with the same footage: Balerion and the Walker thrashing in the streets of King’s Landing. Balerion plummeting through the air, the giant plume of dust and debris of their landing. Her and Jon pushing through the crowd on the helipad. 

She exchanged a questioning look with Jon, who was frowning at the whole display in confusion. 

“You two are the only thing anyone is talking about,” Rhaegar announced. He changed the channels, this time turning to trashy celebrity gossip shows, insipid morning news broadcasts, even sports talking heads: all with cryons and tickers and thumbnails that mentioned her and Jon and their Unit. 

She watched as her brother sifted through the pile of newspapers and tabloids on his desk. “ _‘The Dragons Are Back’_ ,” he recited and picked up another one to read them the headline: “ _’Class Four Walker Brought Down By Rookie Dragon Team’,”_ and another, “ _’The Dragon And The Wolf: The Secret Of Dragon Pit Base’._ ”

He threw the papers back onto his desk and pressed a button on his remote, and the screens morphed into one, giant display, the image gray and grainy, but unmistakable: her and Jon in the cockpit, quite preoccupied with each other. 

Dany felt her cheeks burn, and Jon looked at her sidelong over his shoulder, almost in apology. She sat up straighter in her chair at that, staring her brother down, unable to feel even a little bit sorry for it. 

“What is this about?” she demanded.

Rhaegar turned the screens off and settled back behind his desk and folded his hands in front of him. “I cannot stand in front of the media, as CEO of the company that is footing most of the bill for this supposedly government program, and tell them that I had no idea what you had been planning all this time.” 

She blinked at him, not catching on. She had never included the media and public opinion in her calculations of how this whole thing might go, so her brother’s concerns, though perhaps valid, were not exactly on the top of her list of priorities.

“I had a meeting with Varys today,” he continued gravely and Dany inwardly winced. Varys was the company’s off-putting VP of PR that she had never really cared for. He was as vapid as he was manipulative… but, she supposed that’s why he was so good at his job. “He tells me that the best thing we can do for the company— and, indeed, _your_ project,” he waved a finger between both her and Jon, “is to push you two as far into the public eye as possible.” 

Jon emitted what sounded to her like a groan of frustration that he had tried to snuff out but wasn’t able to quite finish the job. “We have too much work to do to be trotted out like a couple of fucking show ponies,” he protested. 

Rhaegar gave him a sharp look. “I am aware, Ranger, as I and Varys will be arranging most of your schedule from now on.” 

“You can’t do that,” Daenerys interjected hotly. “Jon’s right, we have too much work to do here.”

“What does it matter anyway?” Jon added, sitting forward from his chair. “Let them gossip and spin tales and whatever else. We have more important things to do.”

Rheagar sagged, looking all the world like a man being dragged into a pit of serpents. “The press is glowing now, yes, but if we keep you two under lock and key, the media will do what it does best: speculate wildly… and all that good will we’ve won back will be for naught and any new funds that may have been approved by legislature will be pronounced dead on arrival.” 

There was a prolonged pause where Dany considered all of this very real and very damning information, and her heart sank in terrible understanding. 

Her brother waved a finger between the two of them again. “You both have done something _extraordinary_ here, and make no mistake we will do everything we can to ensure that you are involved in the training of the new pilots, and that you will be sent out with each new Walker Event, but you will also have to sit in a cushy chair for the cameras and smile and wave.” He turned his gaze to her, something in his eyes pleading.

_You owe me one._

She cursed inwardly to herself, knowing that there was no way out of this. She looked over at Jon who was gazing at her knowingly, something about his posture already slack in defeat. 

“What do you want?” she asked her brother. 

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “How long will it take for Bran to get what he needs from that brain?”

Dany frowned, shaking her head. “Not sure,” she answered honestly. “It took months for him to discern what he did from the scrap of brain we were able to find, but that one was not as fresh, and, more importantly, not complete.” She shrugged. “It could take him ages to sift through a more complete brain, or it could shorten the process… we don’t have a way of knowing.”

Rhaegar nodded, seeming pleased. “For the next six weeks, barring any monumental developments on the research side of things, you two will be on every talk show we can think to book every weekend.”

“Three weeks,” Dany countered. 

“Five.”

“Four.”

Rhaegar kissed his teeth, looking less than pleased, but this was a familiar song and dance for them both, though it had been awhile. For the past few years, the name of the game for Targaryen Industries had been ‘lay low and keep out of the papers’, so Dany had largely hung up her media interference spurs, so to speak. 

“Fine,” he finally acquiesced. “In the meantime, you have your freedom and you have your funds. I will not interfere… but, you have an obligation… not to me or the company, but to the future of this project.” He leaned back in his chair, sighing. “Varys will be coordinating and coaching you both in the meantime.” 

Dany ducked her head, not liking it one bit, but knowing there was no avoiding it. She slid her eyes to Jon who seemed to be locked in a similar helplessness. She knew that he was even less fond of media meet and greets and elbow rubbing and all the like, but he would sooner be strung up by the rafters than leave her to do it alone.

That gave her all the strength she needed.

She stood, eager to end it and get on with her work while she was able. “If that is all, brother…”

Rhaegar came to his feet as well, nodding to them both. “Thank you,” he told them sincerely, but pinned her with a look. “Ranger, you are dismissed, but I would like a private word with my sister.”

Jon nodded, turning to the door, giving Dany a concerned look that told her that he’d be just outside the door before leaving them alone.

Her brother squared his shoulders, inclined his head to the wall of now dark screens. “Is this going to… complicate things, Daenerys?”

She didn’t need any clarification, knowing full well why he would choose to put that damning footage up on display for the both of them to see. 

“No,” she answered simply, hoping with everything she had that he wouldn’t ask her for an explanation. In any other circumstance, such a thing would undeniably complicate everything. 

Her brother took mercy on her, by some stroke of dumb luck. “See that it doesn’t,” he said in a way that told her it was an order, not a request. 

It had been a very long time since Rhaegar had spoken to her in such a way. She felt wounded, but not entirely undeserving. She nodded, swallowing back her pride and protests, and left his office without another word. 

+++

The next weeks passed in a blur. 

Later the same day as their frustrating meeting with Rhaegar, they followed up with Bran, who told them mostly what they already knew: it could take weeks to successfully navigate a fresher, more complete Walker psyche. 

He also warned them that he may not be able to find what they sought at all. 

Dany had exchanged a distraught look with Jon at this dire proclamation, so he made the decision that this was a subject best filed under ‘cross that bridge when we come to it’.

In lieu of any earth shattering developments for the coming weeks, something of a routine started to take shape… and it was fucking exhausting. 

Every morning (much too early for his liking) him and Dany (often with Missandei and Tyrion) would pore over figures and graphs, measurements and data taken from the fresh pilot runs and simulations that had commenced in the days following. Burdened with such mundane minutiae that Jon could barely stomach, they would lead training exercises, sparring demonstrations, and even lead lectures alongside the other senior pilots: the Greyjoys and the Lannisters. 

When they weren’t rushing from class room to training arena to treadmill to to mess to shower… they would sit in Varys’ sterile office, dutifully taking notes on proper television decorum and the art of charming the public. Jon seemed to be an object of particular concern to the strange, simpering man, for he focussed much of his advice and lessons on him and him alone. He couldn't really blame him, he supposed. 

Then, every Saturday morning, they would be carted off to do a taping for some insipid show or another. “ _Tonight With Renly Baratheon_ ” was their first visit. By far Westeros’ most popular late night host, the man was flamboyant and charismatic and also mercifully lobbed them softballs the entire night as the live crowd tittered and cheered. (He also flirted shamelessly with Jon, a factor that he had been coached on but never believed would actually happen. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world and it made Dany laugh, so he took it in stride.)

The following week was some morning talkshow hosted by the blunt and cutting Olenna Tyrell and “a trio of wild blue hairs” as Tyrion described them. If Jon were being honest, this was the one he was worried about most and his worries turned out to be entirely valid. Olenna seemed determined to make Jon as uncomfortable as possible, seeming to possess the singular ambition of putting Renly Baratheon’s mostly harmless flirting to shame. 

During this abuse, he got the strange feeling that Olenna was deliberately trying to get a rise out of Dany, as her sharp, blue eyes would glance to his copilot with every one of her bawdy jokes or searing jibes (the woman was witty, Jon would give her that). 

_”No matter where you go,”_ Varys had warned them, _“they will try to get you to slip up. They want to know whether or not you two are fucking...“_ Jon had winced at the coarse phrasing but Varys had hardly noticed, _“…and you want to keep them guessing as much as possible. Whether you two are or aren’t in reality doesn’t actually matter. The public loves to speculate, especially when it comes to two attractive people working closely together— so give them what they want by giving them nothing.”_

Unluckily for Olenna, Dany was well trained at ‘giving them nothing’, it seemed, and Jon was naturally inclined to keep his mouth shut if at all possible... so they were summarily shuffled off set with a disappointed huff. 

Under normal circumstances, Jon would have endured this media circus with the barest modicum of patience and civility. When him and his brother had been shunted into the limelight by the big wigs back in the so-called ‘glory days’, it usually resulted in long nights bending his elbow at a bar after the fact, grumbling to an inattentive bartender about “the public” and “useless gossip”.

But, currently, he had to patiently ‘endure’ hours in plush limousines and handsomely appointed dressing rooms filled with cards and flowers from well-wishers grateful for their efforts. He was being ‘forced’ to sit next to Daenerys Targaryen— already the most beautiful woman he’d ever met— now dolled up with eyeliner, stilettos and form-fitting, sleek, designer dresses. The feminist in him squirmed at the shallowness of it all— dressing his copilot up and parading her around to dazzle the masses, but the baser, lizard-brained parts of him reveled in it. 

He wanted to hate it, but Dany just simply made it bearable. Even _enjoyable_ … despite the fact it seemed as though those brambles and thorns they had cleared between them seemed to have sprouted back up again.

He tried not to think too much about it, to put too much stock in it. They were both so busy, with bigger, better things to do and worry about… they simply couldn’t carve out time to… do all the things he might want to do with her and _to her—_

He was carefully diligent around her, careful to keep things as professional as possible whenever in the public eye, which was infuriatingly often. There may have been a time and a place for them, but they had simply been swept away from it… for now, he hoped. 

It was strange, feeling something as mighty as what he carried for her with no real place to put it for the time being. Especially when almost every waking hour was spent in her presence. It was… exhausting, but he was a soldier, and he’d soldier through this until they fought their way to the other side.

It helped, in some small way, that she seemed equally distressed at this development between them. It came down to simple facts: now there were more duties and more eyes and more _everything_ and it wasn’t just them in that dim sparring room, back when they had to be sneaky about it... hashing it out and knocking each other on the floor into the wee hours. And Dany only worked in facts.

That didn’t mean that there wasn’t a certain, strange brand of intimacy that had grown between them. She would reach for his hand in the limousine, squeezing with white knuckles until she could breathe normally after being pushed through a pack of photographers. There’d been more than one occasion where he had to step between her and a presumptive so-called ‘reporter’. She’d even developed the habit of padding into his dressing room before tapings to share a pastry (usually an almond croissant because those were her favorite and it charmed him more than he cared to admit) and curl, sock footed and bare-faced, on the couch after she pilfered a single-serve champagne from his fridge. 

_“You get the good drinks and I get the good snacks. Seems like a fair trade,”_ she had explained the first time this happened.

And so things went, week after week, and they both settled into what was something like a tenuous, unsure comfort, feelings folded up and put away for now. 

He shouldn’t worry. He _knew_ that, he really did... but the very nature of being copilots meant that secret-keeping was not something easily done, and Daenerys had not been the most adept deceiver to begin with. He couldn’t help but think that there was something she was not telling him and it was like a sore that refused to heal because he wouldn’t stop picking at it. 

And he found himself picking at it again, as they walked to Varys’ office… hopefully for the last time. 

“Our last media obligation,” Dany announced with no small amount of relief and a little grin as they slowed to a stop before the door of Varys’ office. 

Four weeks. It had been nearly four, long weeks of this torturous bullshit. Four weeks since he'd kissed her under the wobbly fluorescence of a damaged Dragon console, since they had last spoken of anything except recruits and numbers and Walkers and... and this time tomorrow the media tour would be done. One less thing to distract them. 

He hoped. 

“Come in,” Varys answered from within after he knocked, and he and Dany entered and sat down in front of his sleek, modern desk. Business as usual. 

But, Jon quickly realized that perhaps this might _not_ be business as usual. Varys looked at them gravely from over his desk, hands folded in front of him. 

“Well, it seems that you two have been spoiled long enough,” he announced with a thin, ironic smile. “Tomorrow you’ll be fed to the snake that is Oberyn Martell.” 

Dany cursed under her breath and Jon’s own mortification was felt mostly by proxy, as he was not terribly familiar with Oberyn and his antics, but he _did_ know that the man hadn’t been given the nickname “The Viper” just for laughs. 

“How did this happen?” Dany asked, frowning. 

Varys shrugged. “It simply couldn’t be helped,” he answered. “Oberyn is nothing but persistent, and has been quietly and consistently feeding little rumors and questions about you two and our whole… operation at the end of his shows for weeks. The longer we put him off, the worse he gets.”

“So you waited for almost a month to book us with him?” Jon demanded. 

Varys gave him a sharp look. “We wanted to avoid it altogether, Ranger, but it seems that your recent appearances on what Oberyn deems as ‘nothing more than circuses’ has only made him hungrier. Your so-called ‘winning smiles and non-answers’ do not satisfy him, or, as it turns out, his viewership.”

“And why do we care what his viewership thinks?” he countered.

Varys’ eyebrows ticked up. “Oberyn Martell has cornered the intellectual demographic for the past decade, Ranger, and so has cornered many of those with _money_ and _clout_.”

Jon sagged back in his chair, defeated and not the least bit apprehensive. Beside him, Dany sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Varys… Oberyn’s show is filmed in fucking Sunspear,” she pointed out through gritted teeth.

The man inclined his bald head. “Astute observation, ma’am. We have already arranged travel and lodging for you both.” 

“We can’t just _leave_ ,” Jon protested. “There’s too much to do here.” 

“Ranger I am not sure what to say to you other than my hands are almost quite literally tied, and to point out that this is the last media obligation left to you.” He sighed and leaned back in his plush chair, folding his hands over his belly. “I have coached you well enough for the fools and idiots… I fear that I cannot advise you much on how to handle Oberyn Martell, but I can provide some tips…” He pointed to Daenerys. “Let _her_ do most of the talking…“

“Not much of a tip,” Jon mumbled.

“…and you both perhaps should have a shot of something stout before hand— _just one_ ,” he emphasized with a look between the both of them. “The last thing we need is anyone being nervous or jumpy, but we also don't need anyone drunk on national television.” He swept up two folders sitting on his desk and passed them over. “These are the questions that we’ve agreed upon, but don’t put too much stock in it. Oberyn likes to… shoot from the hip.”

They sat silent and sullen, nothing much to say for themselves as they sheaved through the documents given to them.

“Now,” Varys continued briskly. “I suggest that you two leave here and go straight to your rooms to pack and prepare. Your flight leaves in two hours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not going to lie to you all: life has fucking sucked for me lately. i am a nervous fucking wreck, but that's besides the point. 
> 
> i hope you like it, please forgive me, part two up tomorrow after some polishing tonight. thank you. i hope you are all doing well and keeping safe despite the weird, weird times. love you, mean it.
> 
> thank you again to justwanderingneverlost for the lovely moodboard. thank you for the tumblrinas and tarts for the support, though i haven't been around in awhile and i'm sorry. come say hi @frostbitepandaaaaa on tumblr cause i'm lonely. ~~not really but kind of.~~


	4. ACT III, PART 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You look tired,” he pointed out, leaning forward on his elbows and peering at her in concern. “Been sleeping okay?”
> 
> She felt a squirm of shame. Her and Jon might have a half-way non-secret that they were poorly concealing from the world, but she had her own, more perilous secret that she was hiding. A certain new and unwelcome guest that had creeped into her slumber most every night.
> 
> She smiled at him, knowing it was wan and not reassuring in the least, but she’d managed to maintain her silence for this long. No way in seven hells she was going to stop… not _now_ , at any rate. 
> 
> “I’m alright,” she assured with a sigh. “Just… stressed. Busy.” 
> 
> He leaned back in his seat, giving her a look that told her loud and clear that he didn’t believe her for a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo, come aboard the consummation train err'ybody.

**ACT III, PART 2**

The plane ride was predictably tense, albeit mercifully brief, as was the ride to the studio. Jon sat across from her in the limo, leg jumping as he stared at his hands folded between his knees, silent and brooding. 

“Hey,” she said to him. If she could have reached, she would’ve knocked the tip of her shoe into his shin companionably. 

He looked up at her and gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. 

“It’ll be okay,” she assured him. “It’s not like we have some deep dark secret to hide.” 

Jon gave her a look that rooted her to the spot— his chin tilted up slightly, his eyes deepening and darkening, seeing straight through her. 

He was right, of course, to look at her like that… they had a _bit_ of a secret, though it was a complicated, delicate matter to say the least. Their relationship had largely been cordoned off to “strictly professional” for the past month… though it hadn't been so _strict_. 

She knew that she hadn’t been the shining example of discretion these past weeks— reaching for him when she felt like she would fly apart at the seams if she couldn’t gather his warmth to anchor her… seeking out his calming, stable presence more than was probably necessary.

He, too, hadn’t exactly been consistent at restraining himself, brushing his knuckles at the small of her back as they were shunted through packs of cameras and journalists. Stepping between her and the more lascivious inquiries from press of the disreputable nature. And the fucking _looks_ he would give her whenever he’d see her in a new dress… they were enough to set her alight like a fuse.

“You look tired,” he pointed out, leaning forward on his elbows and peering at her in concern. “Been sleeping okay?”

She felt a squirm of shame. Her and Jon might have a half-way non-secret that they were poorly concealing from the world, but she had her own, more perilous secret that she was hiding. A certain new and unwelcome guest that had creeped into her slumber most every night.

She smiled at him, knowing it was wan and not reassuring in the least, but she’d managed to maintain her silence for this long. No way in seven hells she was going to stop… not _now_ , at any rate. 

“I’m alright,” she assured with a sigh. “Just… stressed. Busy.” 

He leaned back in his seat, giving her a look that told her loud and clear that he didn’t believe her for a second.

Luckily, the limo lurched to a stop outside the studio and the subject could be discussed no further.

After a few dizzying minutes filled with the usual clamor of paparazzi, they were being primped and prodded by Oberyn’s crew, this time in the same dressing room... a rather odd development considering they'd always had separate dressing rooms, before. 

She couldn't think long on this however, as she was properly distracted despite her best efforts to focus on just about anything else. 

Jon sat next to her under the lights looking simply _devastating_ in a charcoal suit and simple white shirt, left generously open to the third button. A few edges of pink scars peeked from under the fine linen, which she knew he would not appreciate and she felt a pang of sympathy for him. Though, admittedly she was far more interested in the dusting of hair and the slope of muscle she could readily observe. His usual bun had been undone in favor of a slicked back look, loose and full and curling under his ears in an almost a girlish way. 

This ensemble was yet another stark departure from their other media sojourns. Varys had insisted on well-fitting jeans and a button down for Jon to “keep him organic”… whatever the hells that meant. But now, Oberyn was running the show and Dany wasn’t so sure if the clever asshole wasn't doing his damndest to make Jon as tempting as possible. To what end she didn't know and that only made her throat close up with the host of implications behind such a decision. 

Their host for the evening had swept in not a few minutes ago, introducing himself and exchanging pleasantries with his usual impeccable charm. Dany had wrangled with Oberyn just once before, years ago when the so-called Long Night had started, but she knew this song and dance. He liked to placate and soothe his guests, lull them into a false sense of security so they’d be easier prey once he got them in front of the cameras. She’d thought that he’d know better than to try his trick with her.

Soon enough, the make up artists and the PA prepping them on the next steps left, and her and Jon were alone for the first time in… days? She wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, it had been much too long. 

“You look nice,” she told him because it was the truth. He was much too attractive by half. It simply wasn’t fair. 

He grimaced at his reflection in response and began to button up his shirt. 

“They’re just going to unbutton it again before we go on set,” she pointed out. 

He sighed, hands falling in defeat. “How long does this thing usually take?” 

“Long enough,” she answered defeatedly. 

She stood and walked to the little console table next to the door, where all the manner of liquors were gathered, along with cut crystal tumblers and wine glasses. Oberyn was nothing if not hospitable. She plucked the scotch from the table and examined it— Northern, from Bear Island: _Mormont Peated Islay Scotch Whisky_. She turned and waggled the bottle at Jon.

“Fuck me,” he crowed, as he straightened from his chair and took the bottle from her. Dany had to bite the inside of her mouth, hard, not trusting herself to respond to that otherwise innocuous exclamation. “Well, at least Oberyn gives you a proper send off before murdering you for the whole world to see.”

“Indeed,” she quipped, taking two tumblers and sitting at the little couch to pour them both a finger or three. Jon came to sit next to her, knees brushing as they clinked glasses.

“Here’s to making fools of ourselves,” he declared, a little grin flashing on his mouth before he took a swig.

She laughed, his toast doing more to steel her nerves than the resulting smoky sip of scotch. 

If nothing else, she had him. She had _Jon fucking Snow_ in her corner, whatever he may not be to her at present he was her _copilot_ , and no conniving, cunning asshole of a talk show host could change that. 

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

Jon tapped his foot in his shiny polished shoes, nervous. “Don’t know much about Oberyn or his tactics.”

“Well, he’s liable to flirt with both of us, and not for the benefit of the camera.”

Jon’s eyebrows ticked up at that and he took another sip of his scotch. “At least he doesn’t discriminate.” 

She laughed. “Oh no, definitely not.” She scraped the edge of her glass with her thumbnail. “But, honestly Jon… I don’t know what I can tell you to better prepare you. He is not likely to stick to the script for very long— if at all. He’s smart, but he’s also cocky.”

“Ah,” he replied, a little triumphant smile on his face, “a man with an ego.” He sat further back into the couch cushions, his nervous energy simply melting away as his shoulders fell and relaxed. “Been dealing with assholes like that all my life.”

Her smile grew wider, inwardly wishing that he could just _stop_ , for just a moment, being so damn perfect. 

“Seems we have nothing to worry about then,” she declared a bit dramatically as she took another bracing swig of her drink. 

He looked at her, something in his expression souring. “Never said that.” He turned his face away, looking troubled and conflicted. He looked back to her, his brow furrowed. “Not unless you want to come clean right here and now.” 

She blinked at him, for one moment truly not understanding what the hells he was talking about. “Come clean?”

“C’mon, Dany…” The sound of the name that had somehow evolved into some sort of affectation only he could speak, delivered in such soft, pleading tones… it peirced straight through her. “I might not be… your boyfriend or whatever else we may _want_ right now, but I _am_ your bloody copilot.” 

She swallowed, utterly found out and not quite knowing how to properly handle what was happening at this juncture. With him sitting next to her looking as he did, just moments before an interview that could damage, in any number of unknowable ways, a reputation they had spent the past few weeks working so hard to build...

He leaned closer to her, his eyes soft and knowing, almost apologetic. “‘M sorry to have brought this up, now,” he told her, daring to reach for one of her hands. She breathed out a large sigh, feeling some of her tension flee in the face of his grounding touch. “But… unless we’re honest with each other, this all falls apart.” 

She took in another breath and met his gaze. “You’re right,” she croaked. 

He waited, patient as ever, but… as with everything surrounding her and the man in front of her, timing was not on their side and the PA coming to announce that they were ready for them on set popped the small, intimate bubble they had managed to form. 

Jon looked away, kissed his teeth in frustration and threw back the rest of his scotch with nary a grimace. He stood and straightened his jacket before offering her a hand.

She took it, guilt still boiling in her belly. 

“Later,” he murmured when he had hoisted her from the couch. His face was forgiving, understanding as always. 

“Later,” she breathed back, so very relieved and so very grateful. 

Later. She owed him that much, at least. 

They left the dressing room, following along in the PA’s wake, and Dany couldn’t help her pulse quickening in her veins as they came to the edge of the sparse set: two handsomely upholstered chairs, a small table with a water pitcher and glasses, and one plush armchair, clad in worn, brown leather.

There was no live studio audience for Oberyn’s show. An observation that always struck Dany as strange, seeing as though the man in question thrived on public adoration and near-sycophantic attention. But, she supposed, the lack of audience made his show not only more ‘legitimate’ in the eyes of his snobbish viewership, but also allowed for Oberyn to really sink his teeth into his guests without the potential of real-time rebukes that may otherwise stay his hand. 

The studio lights were harsh and overly warm, but they lit up their handsome host well enough. His dimples stood out in deep contrast to his swarthy complexion and neatly trimmed beard as he smiled at them both warmly. Dany shifted in her chair while Jon seemed to be made of stone next to her. 

A crew member counted down with her fingers and then a little red light appeared on the camera and they were on air. 

That was another wild card unlike the others— this was broadcasted live, no tapings. No chances for post production cuts and edits. Everything would be taken as-is.

“Hello and welcome to another edition of _The Dornish Hour_ with me, your host, Oberyn Martell,” Oberyn greeted with a broad smile to the camera. “Tonight, we have two very special guests joining us in the studio: Miss Daenerys Targaryen and Army Special Forces Ranger Jon Snow...“ he then launched into the usual 90-second character intro that was much the same as all the others she had heard in the past weeks. Dany did not pay much attention, taking the moment of respite to look surreptitiously to her right, where Jon sat, stiff and broody. He returned her look, his brow wrinkled in worry, but his mouth set and firm— determined to get through this together. 

“Now, Miss Targaryen,” Oberyn began, turning to her with his arms folded in his lap as he regarded her thoughtfully. “You have been at work on this project for how long now?”

She straightened in her chair, gathering her wits. “Three years this coming September, Mr. Martell.”

“Please, call me Oberyn.” He nodded to Jon. “That goes for you too, Ranger.” He shifted in his chair, frowning, returning to the point. “Three years…” he mused. “That is quite awhile to keep something so monumental and… expensive a secret for so long.” 

Dany smiled at him, inwardly relieved that he seemed to be cutting to the chase at any rate. “Yes, well, as you know… tax funds for any Dragon projects largely dried up years ago. We receive a small fund for research and development—“

“Ah,” Oberyn chirped, crossing his legs and leaning forward in his chair a bit, pen clutched between forefinger and thumb, “I feel that I should clarify for my viewers… this so-called ‘small’ fund costs the tax payer 500 million dragons a year.”

Her smile tightened, her fingers digging into her knee. “Considering that those funds are matched by contributions from my own personal trust… and the general grand scale of what we are doing, I would argue that—“

“So you mean to tell me that this… pet project of yours has cost _one billion_ dragons per year?” he asked with a little affected gasp. 

“Two billion, actually,” Dany corrected levelly, knowing damn well that Oberyn was already aware of this fact. She heard Jon shift in his seat next to her, but willed herself to keep her gaze straight ahead. 

Their host’s eyebrows raised almost into his hairline. “Two billion?” he scoffed. “Then, where, pray tell, did the other billion come from?”

“Loans, mostly.”

“Ah,” he scoffed, something in his nod knowing and mocking. “Stands to reason a company like your father’s—“

“It isn’t my father’s anymore, Oberyn,” Dany amended swiftly, sure to apply a sweet smile to gentle the rebuke. “It is my brother’s.”

“Of course,” he agreed airily, waving his hand. “But a company like _your family’s_ I should say… they still hold so much sway to secure such tremendous credit? Has your father’s history of pernicious greed not bruised your family’s once mighty reputation?”

Dany felt a pulse of anger that left her quite voiceless. Jon cleared his throat from her side and shifted forward in his chair. 

“Mr. Martell—“

“Please, Ranger, call me Oberyn,” the man repeated sweetly. “You are my guest, after all.” 

Dany watched Jon, trying to keep her shock carefully hidden. In all their interviews, he had never once volunteered to answer a question not directed squarely at him.

“Oberyn…” he amended slowly, obviously bridling his emotion, “… as both a former and current Ranger, I find it prudent to point out that Miss Targaryen here is only working to correct whatever mistakes her father may have committed. With not only her time, but her own money… which, admittedly, I did not know until this very moment.” 

He cleared his throat, something in his voice shifting and sharpening as he clenched his hands together before he continued: “And her brother has aided her in whatever way he can as well.” His elbows were leaned against his thighs, his hands clasped together as he raised a finger to their host in a sort of gentle accusation. “Judging the actions of the child based on those of the parent… that seems to fly in the face of everything Dorne says they stand for in my mind, Mr. Martell.”

Oberyn seemed momentarily speechless, which was something of a feat. And, likewise, Dany sat at his side, blown away by his articulation. Jon was not dim, by any means, but he was _also_ not one for speeches or lengthy proclamations. 

Their host leaned back in his chair, stroking a hand over his mouth, regarding Jon with a new-found curiosity, before his dark eyes turned sharply back to her. 

“What do you think of this, Miss Targaryen?” he asked softly, gesturing to Jon with a wave of a long finger. “It is true, what he says: Dorne is not one to judge the child by the parent’s actions, but it bears repeating… with what your father did—“

“My father was a greedy man,” she interjected quickly, eager to get this over with, “and… towards the end of his life, he was… unstable and unruly, it’s true. He made many bad decisions. The worst of all being his desire to mine the ancient depths of Old Valyria. Despite protests from all of his children and many others besides… he ordered that the project begin and now we are here.” She looked down at her hands, emotion getting the better of her, memories foul and sweet flooding in. “We cannot change what my father chose to do, but I and my brother can choose to fix it… in any way we know how.” 

There was a long, penetrating silence, and it seemed like Oberyn regarded her with something that could’ve bordered on respect. 

“Well… who am I to argue with such heroic sentiments?” He looked down to his little legal pad perched on his knee, and folded his hands together. “You mentioned your brother… but I suspect that you are referring to your eldest, Rhaegar, now serving as President and CEO of Targaryen Industries.” 

She tensed, knowing where this was going. She heard Jon shift beside her. “Yes.”

“Can you tell us what happened to your other brother? Viserys Targaryen?” He consulted his legal pad again, as if that were necessary. “Referred to as the ‘Last Dragon’, I believe?” 

Dany felt a swoop of dread in her belly. “Do I really have to retell a tale I believe everyone in this country knows already?”

Oberyn frowned, waving his hand in a dismissive way. “No, no, no,” he said, apologetic as he shook his head, “I do not wish for you to retell a tale that is surely so traumatic for you.” He turned to Jon who immediately straightened in his chair, readying for a fight. “Perhaps my question is better focussed on the veteran, here. Ranger… what do you think of the tragic fate of Mr. Targaryen and so many other Dragon pilots that happened to make it out of their Dragon Units alive?”

He blinked at him, his eyes flashing with suspicion. “What do you want me to say to that?” he questioned hotly. “It’s terrible.”

“So, you agree… it is a terrible thing.” Oberyn shuffled through the pad on his lap, lips pursed. “Allow me to clarify for our viewers who may not know, Ranger… you are also referred to as the White Wolf, correct?”

Jon nodded, jaws clenching. 

“And you and your brother were copilots, correct?” He glanced back down at his papers. “To a Unit called ‘Long Claw’?” 

“Yes.”

“And… correct me if I’m wrong or falling into flattery here, Ranger, but you and Robb Stark were the best Dragon Unit team in the history of the program.” 

His shoulders twitched and he cleared his throat. “That’s what they say.” 

“And your brother… he met a very tragic end, did he not?” Jon didn’t answer and Obeyrn continued, dauntless. “And now… you’ve returned to the same service that has caused you so much pain… engineered by the same family that started this whole mess to begin with.” Oberyn peered at his subject with much relish, pinning him with his dark eyes. Dany felt her heart fly up into her throat, anger and fear swamping her in equal measure. She gripped the arms of her chair for purchase in what she hoped was an unnoticeable way. 

“Why?” Oberyn finally asked. 

Jon was shockingly immediate in his response: “Because, like most people in the world, Oberyn, I was working a dead-end job, with no end in sight and no hope left. I was living in a world where perpetual warfare was simply a reality.” Dany watched as the muscles in his jaws jumped, his control tenuous. “Sure… when I first came to Dragon Pit Base… it was out of… boredom, maybe. I didn’t believe it. Maybe I didn’t even _want_ to believe it, but I found out that Miss Targaryen… she wanted an end and she found one, as well.”

Dany inwardly cursed. They _hadn’t actually_ found that end game, yet, and Varys had been very clear about ‘making any promises’ on live TV.

“I’ve heard this before…” Oberyn observed mildly, looking all the world like a fox in a hen house, “this supposed ‘end game’.” He turned back to her, something hungry in his expression. “And what, exactly, is this end game, Miss Targaryen? Scholars and scientists who far out rank you in this subject have failed time and again to find such a cure. What makes you… daughter of the man responsible for this cataclysm, qualified to be certain that you’ve found it?”

The wording of this question was audaciously adversarial, and, Dany thought with some cold amusement, it would have better served him if he had pointed the question to her with more deference. Maybe the cool and clever Oberyn Martell was losing his touch. 

“We are not certain that we’ve found it, Oberyn,” she clarified evenly. “We are still diligently at work to ensure that our theories and data are, in fact, tenable, like any good scientific pursuit.” 

He frowned, inclining his head to Jon. “Your copilot just stated the opposite, Miss Targaryen.”

“Ranger Snow is a believer in our cause, Oberyn,” she returned, “so you must forgive him if he speaks somewhat… hyperbolically.”

“Aye,” Jon interjected roughly, “I simply meant that Daenerys has formulated a plan that has… more promise than any of the others.”

Oberyen leaned back in his chair, stroking his chin. “I see…” he muttered, unconvinced. “Miss Targaryen you used the word ‘tenable,’” he began, a dubious line between his dark brows. “That’s an interesting thought…” He waved a finger between the two of them. “What data and theories led you to believe that Drift compatibility would be so _tenable_ between you and Ranger Snow, here?”

Dany shook her head, putting on what she hoped was an amiable smile. “I think you and I both know that it would be quite impossible— and quite dull— for me to fully enumerate the trials and metrics that I have studied and developed with all the best minds of the field for the past two years, Oberyn,” she answered, sitting ramrod straight at the edge of her chair. “But, I think my and Ranger Snow’s performance speaks for itself.”

Oberyn smirked at her, his own professional passion for a worthy opponent getting the better of him. He waggled a finger between the both of them, shifting straighter in his chair. 

“So… let’s talk about said _performance_ , shall we?” He looked to his crew, past the lights and cameras. “Can we get the footage from their battle, please?” 

There was a small pause before their host was directing her and Jon’s attention to a little screen to their left. Dany did as she was bidden, though the footage was nothing new. Once Balerion finally made his dramatic return to earth Oberyn turned his attention back to them once again. 

“A performance like that has scarcely ever been seen in recent memory,” he stated with a little grin. “Tell me… is this the type of performance that we can expect from all of the Dragon Crews from your project?”

“I cannot speak to that, as we have not seen said crews in action… but I can assure you that the numbers are very promising,” Dany answered. 

“Mm…” Oberyn hummed, leaning back in his chair with his lips pursed as he consulted his pad of paper again. “Ranger,” he began abruptly, pointing the pen he was twirling within his fingers squarely on Jon. “What would happen to you if, say, Miss Targaryen here were to meet a tragic end?”

“Excuse me?” Jon returned, bristling. 

Oberyn spread his hands out in faux innocence. “I am only speaking hypothetically, Ranger. Allow me to give you some numbers…” He cleared his throat and peered down his nose at his notes. “At its height, the Dragon Unit project saw a mortality rate of pilots of almost 43 percent,” he recited, “those who did survive saw an incarceration rate of nearly 32 percent… and of those not incarcerated, nearly _87 percent_ sought the aid of mental health professionals.”

Their host paused, looking between the two of them, allowing these admittedly damning numbers to sink in for not only his guests, but his hungry viewers. Dany felt herself tensing up, muscles winding like a cord on a winch.

“One of the goals of Miss Targaryen’s project here,” he went on, turning his attention back to Jon, “is to minimize the mental toll of piloting Dragons… and I think we can all agree that the jury is still out on that front, correct?”

He was bloody right, of course, but neither her or Jon was going to give him the satisfaction. 

“But another is, ostensibly, to keep seasoned Dragon pilots in the system. To recycle them as needed. Before, a pilot without a copilot was of no use to the program. He or she would be discharged with all honors and… more importantly, all pensions and other expensive services that were promised to Dragon pilots. That’s an awful lot of money and time saved, don’t you think, Ranger?”

Dany felt all the blood and feeling leave her limbs, the shock so tactile and all consuming, she couldn’t be sure if she were fucking _incensed_ or simply blown away by Oberyn’s audaciousness— his profound and blatant perversion of her life’s work. 

“You think all this is to _save money_?” she spat, her composure slipping.

Oberyn waved a hand in dismissal, his saccharine reassurances making her blood boil under her skin. “I am not discrediting your work, Miss Targaryen,” he cooed. “Because of your tireless study, we can now understand the Drift and Drift compatibility and what makes it… tick. Quite a feat, of that I cannot deny.” 

“So what are you saying, Mr. Martell?” Jon managed, his voice shockingly level. 

“I am _saying_ , that though Miss Targaryen may have found a way to better recruit Dragon pilots, better train them and everything else… the bond between copilots has always been intrinsically and irrefutably enduring and profound. _That_ is something that cannot be denied. Even when we knew next to nothing about Drift compatibility… we knew that much, at least.” 

There was a stunned silence in his wake, and Dany felt all her resolve unravelling fast. She had to close her eyes for just an instant too long than what would be considered normal to try to grapple with her misfiring nerves. She could just _see_ her dream flashing bright and lurid behind her eyes… the same damnable apparition that had visited her night after night for the past three weeks. Jon screaming in pain and terror as he was ripped from the cockpit, the rush of water and the screech of metal—

“To… manufacture such a thing seems to me, and to many of my viewers, morally dubious at best— _especially_ when the loss of life is so tragically high while serving in the cockpit of a Dragon,” Oberyn pressed. “So, my question to both of you, I suppose, is… what happens? What happens if the unthinkable should come to pass since the odds are, undeniably, not in your favor? Would you or Miss Targaryen here simply… move on? Throw your name back in the ring to do it all over again? After all, that seems to be the point of Miss Targaryen’s system here.”

“Don’t presume to tell me what the _point_ of my work is, Oberyn,” she hissed through her clenched jaws. “I will not sit here and be lectured by a talk show host of all people and be made to defend what we are trying to accomplish for the good of humanity.” 

Their host simply blinked at her, unsatisfied, awaiting her elaboration. He turned his attentions back to Jon, his original target. “What do you think, Ranger?” 

“I think…” he replied, his voice a low and dangerous thing, like a missile below the waterline, “that if Dany or I are dead, you all would have bigger things to worry about.” 

Dany slammed her eyes shut, upset at not only Jon’s very much uncivil reply to their host, but at herself, at her treasonous brain, conjuring up those fucking images that had haunted and hounded her for weeks. What if the worst _did_ come to pass? What then? Where would she be? Where would they _all_ be?

Against her best efforts, she released a small, pained sound. All her fears and doubts frothing up to the surface, to be ignored no longer. 

The silence that met this outburst was palpable, crackling with an anxious tension. She looked to Jon, who regarded her with such naked worry she wanted to cry, and then back to Oberyn, who was practically licking his chops. 

“You want the truth, Oberyn?” she finally said, voice quiet yet edged like a thorn. “If everything goes to plan, there will never be a need for the Dragon Unit program to continue in perpetuity… where this imagined scenario you seem so fond of will come to pass. Where we would callously _recycle_ pilots like they were no more than soda cans.” 

She glanced at Jon, her font of strength, and her resolve firmed in an instant at the look of pride in his eyes. “But, Oberyn, you’re good… you’re a true master of your craft. I’ll give you that.” She watched as the man in question preened before her. “Because, you’re right. Drift compatibility… as much as I’ve strived to fully understand it, I can’t. There is something at work underneath that may never be understood. I can’t speak for my copilot, but… if tomorrow, Ranger Snow and I were to head out there and the worst were to come to pass… I wouldn’t be able to step into the Drift with anyone else ever again.” 

Again, silence reigned, and Oberyn seemed caught between elation that he had managed to tease out such candor and awe of the boldness of her claim.

In the momentary peace, Dany dared look over at Jon and cursed herself for doing so. She had never witnessed such an expression on anyone before— want and adoration rimmed with something dark and dangerous. As if he wanted to brand her just as emphatically as she had just branded him— boldly and bravely, in front of, essentially, an entire continent. 

What little strength she had managed to regain was washed away in the wake of it. She bit her lip, looked away, trying to trap some of that fleeing power within her clenching fists, her nails digging angry red crests into her palms. 

“Well,” Oberyn sighed from across them, “bold words from our heroes, folks. Thank you, my friends, for joining me this evening.” 

With that, their host shook their hands and signed them off for a commercial break. Mercifully, only half of Oberyn’s show was interview-based… the second half was all so-called thoughtful analysis and editorial commentary on current events. 

Numbly, she followed Jon and the PA as they were led off stage and their microphones were detached from hems and lapels. And, before she knew it, they were being shunted back into the limo, whisked away to the nearby hotel where they would be staying the night before their crack-of-dawn flight the next day. 

Jon left her to her silence, sitting across from her in the dim cab of the limo with dark, roving eyes that were comforting rather than invasive. Dany was quietly elated at his mercy. Most other men would have pelted her with questions, would have demanded further explanation immediately. 

But she had promised him ‘later’, and he knew that she would make good on her promise. He did not need to prod her like an unsure child, desperate for validation. She was still too… shaken, too raw, after having her layers peeled away by what amounted to a two-bit carnival barker for all the world to see.

But, just because Jon Snow didn’t actually open his mouth did not mean he was entirely silent. He caught her gaze just after they slid into the backseat, and, sure that he had her attention, pressed two fingers to his chest—just over his heart— and angled them to her, before returning them back to his chest. 

It was the same, unmistakable gesture he had introduced to her all those nights ago… when the world was a bit simpler, and they could kiss each other on a rickety fire escape without a care. If anyone were to ever ask her, she would never be able to accurately articulate what this strange sign language met, but she just… understood.

And it was so _comforting_ , so reassuring she nearly broke down, right then in there in the stupid limo. But, instead, she bit her lip and looked away after a moment, and left the car as soon as it pulled up at the hotel.

She closed the door of her room, sat on the edge of the bed and did not move for some time.

+

He froze at the sound of a knock on his door. 

Jon stood from where he had been sitting idly on the edge of his bed, mind shifting from blank static to something akin to panic. After the interview, after _everything_ , he simply didn’t know what to do with himself. He had chosen to give Dany the time she needed, to sift through whatever mess she was tangled up in in peace, but the longer he sat dumbly in the silence the more unsure he became. 

Which is perhaps why his heart pounded at the sight of her standing at his door in sock feet, her dress exchanged for sweatpants and a tank top. He felt a twinge of embarrassment… he’d been sitting in silent torment in his room for hours, and yet hadn’t even taken off his shoes. 

“I’ve been having nightmares,” she greeted him flatly, eyes steady on his own. “Well… _a_ nightmare.”

He cleared his throat, nodded, and took a step to the side, holding the door open for her. 

She accepted his invitation and perched herself at the end of the bed. Jon kept his distance, awkward and unsure as he floated at the border of the small hallway and the bedroom with his hands in his pockets. 

“I don’t know why I haven’t told you,” she went on, clicking her thumbnails together in her lap. The look she gave him was sharp and pinned him hard and fast to where he stood. “Because it’s about you.”

“A… nightmare? About me?” he asked roughly, confused and, oddly, ashamed. He never wanted to be a source of fear for her, even in the lawless realm of dreams and nightmares. He opened his mouth to say something, feeling the need to apologize or beg forgiveness… but forgiveness for what, exactly? 

“Do you know what a Drift imprint is?” she went on.

He nodded. “When parts of memories imprint on someone’s Drift partner.” He waved a hand towards his head. “’S like a… shadow of a memory.”

“Or a ghost,” she offered and he nodded again in agreement, not quite sure what the point of this was. “Jon, I think… that I’ve been seeing the memory of your brother’s death, but instead of Robb Stark, it’s you that’s being ripped away from me.” 

He felt himself go cold, feeling oddly queasy as he swallowed back the lump in his throat. 

She straightened from the bed, coming closer to him, and when she looked up he saw that her eyes were glassy with tears. “I lied, Jon,” she told him, her voice a weak and tremulous thing. “I _am_ afraid.” She reached up and stroked the line of his jaw. He closed his eyes, reveling in the echo of an intimacy that had been barely tasted and yet so long missed. 

“What if… that nightmare turns to memory? What if I lose you after I just found you?” she went on. As weighty and painful as the look in her eyes was, he couldn’t find the strength to look away. She shook her head, lips quivering as she fought her tears. “I _can’t_ lose you like that, Jon.”

“You won’t,” he managed, maybe a bit hasty, a bit needy. He couldn’t bear the way she was looking at him, like he was the lone, green glade in a plane of scorched earth, the only refuge left to her. 

“Hey,” he pressed, sensing her lingering doubt. He brought his hands up to frame her face, jostled her a bit, ensuring that his words really stuck. “Don’t… think about that, Dany. It won’t happen.” 

He was not a man of false promises, and he knew that _she_ knew that. Despite whatever odds, the tremendous peril that they would be facing in the coming days, weeks or months… it didn’t matter. He gave her his word and everything else would be damned. A fucking Walker wasn’t going to snatch him away from her or her from him. 

“I know,” she answered, something shifting within her, her spine straightening and her shoulders pushed back. “I know,” she repeated, her voice honed and heated as she fisted her hands in the lapel of his jacket. “But I need— I _want_ you to show me you're here with me, now. And will be, when this is all over.”

And there it was, the dizzying fume of desire that he had kept at bay with varying degrees of success for the past weeks came roaring in, slamming into vein and muscle.

He didn't know what else to do— words couldn’t possibly carry all he needed to tell her, and words weren’t what she was seeking, anyway. He grabbed her up and kissed her, tried to breathe life into the mighty and impossible promise he had delivered to her with his lips and tongue and hands. It was a dumb, foolish endeavor. Promises did not abide in war… did not abide here, at the end of all things. 

But it could abide here, among them and between them. It had to. 

He tightened his fingers on her hips and pivoted them both as he allowed himself to explore the column of her neck with his mouth, to collect all the soft, beautiful sounds of pleasure she was making like little trinkets to admire later. 

He’d been walking them to the bed, unconsciously, but their progress stalled, the back of her knees hitting the edge of the mattress.

“This is familiar,” she pointed out with a wicked little smile that sent his blood alight. 

“Dany…” he breathed, his chest rising and falling as if he’d just finished a hard run. “You’re sure?”

She smiled at him, small and sweet, twined her fingers through his hair at the base of his neck. “Please,” was all she had to say before she took up his mouth in her own and dragged him down to the bed with her.

Maybe it was the strength of their bond, the intensity of their desire… or maybe it was the aching and longing they had both endured for weeks, but they fell into each other with a dizzying, outlandish force. 

He delved his tongue into her inviting mouth, moved his hands up and under her top to consume all that heat and skin he had craved for so long. It was frankly painful to be parted from her, even in the most minuscule and briefest of ways, like when he had to lean away to yank her shirt over her head. Dany’s equalled response— tugging at his shirt and jacket, nails raking down his neck and chest, moaning in unspeakable need— only served to stoke a bed of coals that was in danger of bursting aflame to burn them up proper. 

When they were finally bare to their waists, the seal of their skin was enough to make him to see stars. Jon groaned into her mouth, filling his palm with her breast, fingers spread wide and greedy. She arched her back in response, pressing herself more fully into his hands. 

His head swam, racing with all the filthy things he wanted to do her… all the things he wanted to make her _feel_ with her so willing and pliant under him, but there was something strangely hasty and needy between them both in that moment. 

It was as if they had just left a bad Drift together. As if the both of them had found each other lost and afraid in some foreign land and had plucked each other out simultaneously. And, now, the only way to find their way back to earth was to fully meld together, to become some strange and singular alloy.

Dany was keyed up beneath him, shaking and sighing while her hands fumbled at his belt as he lapped her neck and rolled her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He willed himself to break away from her again, though it proved a struggle, and hooked his thumbs over the waistband of her pants and yanked them down her legs. 

Evidently, she had opted to leave her panties in her hotel room, for she was bare and ready for him and his heart quite literally stopped at the sight of it, at the sheer magnitude behind such a choice. His eyes tried to drink her in, sprawled wantonly on the plush duvet, a spill of molten silver. She looked back at him with hooded eyes dark with desire, her chest and neck red and roughed with beard burns. 

He wanted to say something… _anything_ , really, but the words stalled in his throat, not to be brought out to sully this moment, to cheapen it with what he could better communicate with his body. 

She was watching him, intent and waiting and he understood what she wanted. Never breaking her stormy gaze, he undid his belt, toed off his shoes and kicked them away, peeled off his socks and discarded his pants and underwear and stood before her, allowing her to drink her fill as he had just done with her. 

Her hungry eyes traced every line of him, it seemed, and a faint flicker of self consciousness broke through his haze of lust. It had been a very long time since a woman had seen him like this, had looked at him like this, and the realization left him with an edge of anxiety. 

But he couldn’t let it intrude. Not here, not with her.

A sound left Dany’s mouth… something almost like a whine and she spread her feet on the bed and he couldn’t help but drop his eyes to take in the vision she revealed— her cunt pink and wet and perfect. 

“Jon.” 

His willpower had already been drawn to its snapping point, but at this he lunged for her, unable to deny such a command. Their mouths crashed together again, and he snaked a hand down, parting her folds to brush a finger over her clit. 

Dany choked on a gasp and he sucked in a breath at the warmth and wet he found there, his vision nearly whiting out at how eager and wanting she was. 

_”Fuck,”_ she breathed in his ear as she hooked a leg over his hip for purchase, brought her hips clean off the bed to rut herself against the length of his cock in a shameless display. He was so fucking hard and ready for her it would be a wonder if he lasted more than a few short minutes. 

Jon needed no more encouragement. He took hold of himself with his hand, well covered with her slickness, and, as slowly as his frantic lizard brain would allow, pushed himself inside her. She was so fucking wet and tight and bore down on him so deliciously that he wanted nothing more than to fuck her with little mercy. But her small noises of pain and pleasure stayed him, as drunk on her as he was. 

“Okay?” he gritted out when he was buried to the hilt, every fiber in his body vibrating with restraint as he lay above her on his elbows, watching her face for any discomfort. 

She nodded, bringing her other leg over his hip, taking him ever deeper and he cursed into her shoulder, the sensation nearly intolerable. She turned her face and kissed him, something within it urgent and reassuring, and he took the hint and finally succumbed to the need searing in his veins. 

He pressed his lips under her jaw, the jump of her pulse setting the rhythm almost unconsciously as he snapped his hips into her own and drank in every breath and exhalation she gave him. As close as they were, it didn’t seem close enough, and he brought his knees forward to push her thighs further apart, seating his whole weight in the cradle of her hips. Dany coiled her arms around his shoulders, almost bringing her spine clean off the bed in her effort to simply melt away into him. 

He could feel her tensing around him as he invaded her, his thrusts growing more and more savage and graceless as his desire revved him right to the redline. He could hear her gasps grow more and more frantic, more desperate. “Jon,” she begged, lifting her hips to meet his own. 

He knew he wouldn’t last much longer, so he wedged his hands under her shoulder blades and hoisted her up until she was seated in his lap, speared by his cock and nearly every inch of her creamy skin pressed against him. She gasped in surprise, eyes wide with both shock and delight. He adjusted his legs on the bed, careful not to unsheath himself from her heat. 

He filled his hands with her perfect, ample ass and urged her forward and then upwards, ensuring that she stayed close, her clit grinding down on him just right. 

Dany caught on quickly enough, spurred on by the edge of the orgasm that she was chasing. Jon wasn’t sure how he held back for as long as he did, the new angle exquisite as she turned into some divine creature within the bracket of his arms that would surely be the end of him. 

With every thrust he brought her hips forward with his hands on her ass, and with every thrust she seemed to grow a bit more wild, her breasts swaying temptingly before him. He managed to catch a dark nipple in his teeth, teasing it with his tongue.

“Oh, fuck, Jon—“ she choked and that was that. She was seizing around him, her mouth slack in a soundless cry, everything locked up.

“Oh, holy fuck,” he gasped, feeling her clench and ripple around him. His head was fucking spinning, the inevitable edge of his own release racing toward him. He hooked one hand under her shoulders and steadied her with another at her hip, keeping her sealed to him as he pushed her back flat upon the sheets, her legs twined tightly around him. He managed one last, savage thrust before he was twitching and spilling inside her, groaning into her neck as her own climax was still ebbing and flowing around his cock.

For a long while, the room was filled with nothing but the sound of their panting, their bodies still languishing in a swirl of dopamine. As some of his senses returned to him, he noticed that Dany’s grip around his hips and shoulders had hardly slackened. And, likewise, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to loosen his own hold on her, something in him uncertain that she wouldn’t simply turn to dust in his arms if he were to release her. That this whole, beautiful encounter had actually been a dream.

“Mm… Dany,” he murmured, pressing his nose into the little wispy hairs at her temple. “You okay?”

She turned her face towards him, her mouth wavering as if she were fighting tears, or laughter, he couldn’t be sure. He brushed a few webs tendrils of damp hair from her flushed face, his chest tightening at the look she was giving him.

“Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?” she gasped, voice alight with happiness yet shadowed by something sadder. 

He chuckled, tightening his arms around her. “I don’t know, but we have a lot of lost time to make up for.” 

She laughed, truly and wholly this time, and tucked her face in the crook of his neck. 

+

Dany had had her fair share of painful early morning wake-up calls, but this one was by far the worst of them. 

Barristan Selmy, head of their security detail, rapped loudly on the door, jolting them both awake with commiserate moans of misery. 

“The car to the air port leaves in one hour, sir,” there was a small pause. “Ma’am.”

Dany groaned again, hiding her face in her pillow in embarrassment. Barristan’s room was right next door. Either he had heard them last night (quite likely, considering), or he had simply assumed as much when he had failed to find her in her own room before coming to Jon’s (Barristan had a copy of both their room keys for security purposes). Most likely both. The old man was still sharp as a tack.

“Thank you Barristan,” Jon called back. 

“Just to be sure, sir,” Barristan returned, his voice a bit tight, “for… security reasons: is Miss Targaryen with you?”

“Yes, Barristan, thank you,” Dany answered, seeing the slightly mortified expression on Jon’s face. 

“Thank you, ma’am.” And, his job now done, he left without more to ado. 

“Well that was horrifying,” Jon muttered, turning toward her with a little grin. 

“Mm,” she hummed in agreement, “best get used to horrifying moments.” 

He sighed heavily, glancing at the clock on the bed side table. _5:30_ it flashed mockingly at them. “Fuck,” he groaned.

She giggled, burrowing a bit further into the plush duvet despite the limited time they had to pack and ready themselves for their flight. “Should’ve done a bit more sleeping last night.” 

“No,” he asserted as he rolled back to her, pulling her into his arms, “we can sleep on the plane.”

“Aw,” she pouted, “so no mile high club for you?”

Jon frowned in mock hurt. “Now, let’s not be hasty.”

She hummed happily into the crook of his neck. 

The previous evening had been the happiest few hours she could remember in a very, very long time. They’d enthusiastically ‘made up for lost time’, as Jon had put it, three times over and had ordered entirely too much room service to boot. Additionally, a large contributor to their early morning misery was their shameless emptying of the minibar. 

The previous evening had been like throwing open a long-neglected release valve, pressure and stress and emotions pouring through in a torrent and she felt replete and lax in the wake of it. But, things would be undeniably different, now. New complications and frustrations would arise on this road they had fearlessly trekked down, but it would be no more trying than the previous weeks had proven to be. 

No matter what perils and pitfalls may arise, she’d never been so sure of anything in her life. She truly felt invincible, now, laying within in the cool sheets of Jon’s bed, wrapped up in his arms as tightly as a tow cable. That final, vital piece had finally slid home and nothing would shake it loose… she was sure of it.

They just had to save the world, first. 

“What do you say to a shower?” Jon asked after a long, ruminative moment where he ran a thumb over the cap of her shoulder.

She looked up at him, her grin devilish. “Sounds like a plan, Ranger.”

+

She knew something was wrong the moment she stepped from the helicopter. 

“Ma’am,” Tyrion greeted curtly. 

“Tyrion,” she returned as they crossed the helipad to the bay doors. “Won’t even let me settle in before you start raking us over the coals for the Oberyn interview?” 

Tyrion shook his head, looking between the both of them furtively. “No, no…” he began, hands twitching behind his back. “I think you did quite well, actually. It’s Bran.” 

Her and Jon both stopped dead in their tracks. 

“What about him?” Jon asked sharply. “Is he okay?”

Tyrion raised a calming hand. “He’s fine, Ranger… _but_ he does have some news.”

“What news?” Dany demanded. 

Tyrion didn’t answer immediately, looking past her shoulder to where Jorah Mormont and Commander Grey were approaching them. “Gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind taking Ranger Snow’s and Miss Targaryen’s things to their rooms?” The two men nodded, relieving them both of their various bags. Tyrion turned his attention back to her and Jon. “Come,” he instructed, turning on his heel and leading them further into the base. 

She shared an alarmed look with Jon as they followed in Tyrion’s wake. She couldn’t help the stab of dread in her belly, her brain assuming the worst: that Bran had been wholly unable to divine anything else from the brain they had harvested for him, and that they were, essentially, back at square one with no end in sight. 

_Figures_ , she thought disdainfully to herself. After the blissful evening just a few hours ago, it would only be fitting that it would all come crashing down in the worst possible way. 

They slowed to a stop before the heavy security doors that lead into the tunnels of Dragon Pit Base and Tyrion busied himself with verifying his identity to the various screens. While he was distracted, Dany reached out to Jon, standing stiffly next to her with his jaw tight and his shoulders high and tense. 

He seemed startled, at first, but eventually relaxed, offering her a small smile as he twined his fingers with her own, giving them a firm, assuring squeeze. 

She dropped his hand as the door slid open with a ‘hiss’ and the three of them stepped into the cool gloom of the tunnels. 

When they finally made it to the lab, Bran and Sam were crowded around a table cluttered with binders and overflowing with large scale print-outs from the industrial plotter. 

“Ma’am, Jon,” Sam greeted them both with a nod, something in his expression eager but wary. 

She didn’t know how to read that. “Sam,” she returned. “Bran… what do you have for us?”

Bran offered her a placid smile as he gestured to the printouts they had been poring over. “Would you like the good news, or bad news first?”

Both Jon and Dany stepped closer, looking over the printouts curiously. She couldn’t really make hide nor hair from it. One looked almost like a star chart, while another looked to be like the readings from a seismograph. 

But one especially caught her eye and she pulled it closer to her with two fingers. A glossy, almost high-res photo of what looked to be the snarling, scowling face of a Walker, eyes blue and frigid, a ring of thorny horns sprouting from its gruesome head. 

“The Night King,” she muttered. 

“Correct,” Bran told her, “and we know where he is.” 

Dany felt her heart fly into her throat as she exchanged a look with Jon. His expression reflected the same things she was feeling— thrilled and dreadful all at once. 

“Is that the good news, Bran?” Jon asked his brother carefully, taking the photo she passed to him to examine.

“Indeed,” he answered with a heavy sigh. He leaned over the table, shifting through the papers until he found what he was seeking and pulled it from the pile. It was a topographical map… of what Dany could not ascertain. 

He tapped on an area towards the center of the map, where the contour lines were especially concentrated. “This is where we are almost certain the Night King is.”

There was a small, intense silence, while her and Jon surveyed the lines of the map. 

“It’s under the fucking ocean?” Jon asked, his tone bitter. Dany was inwardly impressed, as she couldn’t begin to understand what she was looking at… though, she supposed it made sense that her copilot would be able to read such a map with his military experience. 

Bran nodded, running his finger along another set of clustered lines, just the east. “Just off the coast of Old Valyria.” 

Dany felt her heart stop and Jon’s shoulders fell, his eyes closing in defeat.

“I’m guessing this is the bad news?” Dany asked, grim. 

“Aye,” Bran supplied, pulling yet another document forward— this one a spindly seismograph reading. “Sam and I believe that he shelters there for safety… but we think he is also… feeding.”

“Feeding?” Jon repeated, incredulous.

“Consuming the radioactive remnants of Old Valyria,” Sam explained. “Radiation is what grows the Walkers… makes sense that the Night King would sustain himself on the same thing that gives his thralls life and power.” 

There was a pregnant pause in which they all tried to soak in these profound revelations. 

“We’ve known that the radiation from Old Valyria is responsible for the birth and the size of the Walkers for some time,” Dany began, voice pitched in apprehension, “what does it matter that the Night King feeds on the same thing?”

“He’s been feeding for a long time,” Bran answered. “Makes him stronger. So he can spawn bigger and better Walkers.” 

Jon sighed, crossing his arms and shaking his head. Dany felt her heart sink into her belly. No one had anything productive to say to this news— this was undeniably terrible news. 

“The radiation in the waters surrounding those ruins is highly toxic,” Dany pointed out slowly. 

Bran nodded, his expression darkening. “Aye,” he agreed, “he is perfectly defended.” 

“Can we lure him out?” Jon asked after another heavy pause. 

Bran pointed at his brother, eyes glinting in approval. “That’s what we’ve been looking into.” 

“The Night King seems driven by two things: hunger for radiation and the desire for destruction,” Sam went on, pulling out yet another document from the pile and tossing it towards them. Jon and Dany exchanged alarmed looks— it was the blueprints of Balerion, their Dragon Unit. 

“The Dragonfire turbines…” Dany whispered almost to herself. 

“Precisely,” Bran affirmed with a nod as he tapped finger on the blueprints, “We’ll need a… show of force.” 

“But that won’t be enough, will it?” Jon questioned, leaning his palms on the edge of the table. “We’ll need actual bomb, won’t we?” 

“Yes,” Tyrion interjected from behind them. Dany turned to see her VP trotting up to the them with a roll of paper under his arm. He unfurled it and flattened over all the other documents and sundry. She knew what it was immediately— schematics for a bomb. A big one. 

“This is what we’ve been afraid of,” Tyrion continued tiredly. He tapped a finger on the lines and figures under his hand. “We began construction on this awhile ago, I’m afraid to say, Miss Targaryen, but it looks like it’ll be just what we need.”

Dany felt herself go cold, her heart lurch to a halt within her chest.

Bran nodded, sighed. “We’ll need to attach this to one of the Units,” he explained. “Draw him out, fight off any guards, and get him to go for this: the ultimate prize. Once he has ahold of it, the pilots can retreat via the escape pods and then we blow it remotely.”

Dany exchanged a very significant glance with Jon, who looked as frightened as he was determined. 

“We’ll do it,” Dany declared. 

“Why did I know that you were going to say that?” Tyrion asked with a sigh. 

“This is my project, Tyrion,” Dany rebutted. 

“Aye, and she’s my copilot,” Jon affirmed with no more elaboration. No more argument was needed. 

“I don’t know if it’s my awful hang over or my strange confidence in the both of you, but I won’t fight you on it,” Tyrion conceded, a grin ghosting his lips. 

“When do we leave?” Jon demanded and Dany’s stomach did a small flip at his enthusiasm. 

“Tomorrow night,” Sam answered, looking nervous. “The next Walker Event is overdue… we don’t want to have any Units damaged and decommissioned after a needless battle. We need every last one we can get.”

“We’re arranging a fleet of aircraft carriers,” Tyrion went on, looking at Dany with raise eyebrows. “Or, rather, your brother is. That’s where he’s been the past few days… groveling to a bunch of buttoned up military hot-heads… of offense, Ranger.”

Jon simply grunted in forgiveness as Dany stared at her VP, shock and bewilderment flooding her in equal measure. “So… you’ve known of this for longer than you’re letting on.” She looked accusingly between Tyrion, Bran and Sam. “Why weren’t we informed of this earlier?”

Tyrion shrugged. “Rhaegar figured you’d already done enough… had been pulling most of the weight for two years, now. He asked to be the first to know of any developments Bran and Sam had… and to only inform you and Ranger Snow when absolutely necessary, so you would not feel the need to… involve yourself more than necessary”

“More than necessary?” she gasped, incredulous. “Tyrion—“

He held up a staying hand, eyes closed, shaking his head resolutely. “You were needed with the recruits, ma’am. You and Ranger Snow both. You were needed out _there_ , selling this whole fucking circus to the public. Rhaegar’s smart, Daenerys, and he wanted to do more. He knew the second you learned that we may need additional support from the military, you’d be in your best pant-suit, entreating with the best of them for days on end.” 

She blinked dumbly at Tyrion’s frankness, something that she had thought she was long past being stumped by. She heard Jon quietly chuckle to himself from behind her. 

“I suggest you get some rest,” he told her and Jon patiently with a nod. “You’ll need it.”

+

The salt spray felt somehow comforting on his cheeks, though it was bitingly cold, the ocean churning under the enormous hull of the carrier they were on. It was anything but peaceful, with helicopters hovering above them in their constant racket, the wind howling through the metal bulwarks, and the gigantic engines thrumming and groaning through the chop. He was glad he wasn’t prone to seasickness, or else he would’ve been in for a miserable few hours. He looked to his left and right, where more ships with more Dragon Units strapped to their decks like strange figureheads were knifing through the surf. He inwardly wondered how his companions were faring in this horrendous weather.

He pulled the plush collar of his bomber jacket higher up his neck, watching the rough-edged horizon brush against the gray sky. 

“How in the hells is it so cold?” A familiar and much-welcomed voice called from behind him. 

He smiled as he watched Dany step up to the gunwale with him, high up on the forecastle where they could admire the brutal grace their Dragon Unit lashed to the deck— hopefully for the last time, oddly enough. 

“Hells if I know,” he answered, shaking his head. “It’s fucking August… at least in King’s Landing.”

She grinned at him, her cheeks red with cold, all bundled up in an army-issued bomber jacket almost identical to his own and that was much too big for her. She looked so fucking adorable it was almost too much— the juxtaposition of the image before him opposite the fierce and brave warrior he knew her as was stark, to say the least. 

“I can’t believe this’ll be our last run,” she said quietly, eyes roving over Balerion, tall and imposing even from the high vantage where they stood. There was only one small, but imperative modification to their Dragon Unit for this all-important mission: the massive warhead fastened to his back, the radioactive warning label yellow and glaring meanacingly under the floodlights. 

He sighed. “It’s weird… as glad as I am for all of this to be over… I’m going to miss it.” 

He felt her arm snake under and over his own, linking it over his elbow. He looked down at her, his heart cinching up at the look she was giving him, lips ghosting with a smile meant just for him. 

“Me too, Ranger,” she told him softly. She lifted a shoulder, grin widening. “Who knows… maybe there’ll be back alley Dragon fights after all this.”

He didn’t know why, but it all came crashing in… the immensity of what they were about to do, together. The implication of something waiting for them both beyond all this. 

He knew he loved her then. That very moment.

He suspected he had for quite awhile, but his mind and heart were simply much too weary to repair the fortifications she seemed so deft at destroying at that moment. 

He did not give one damn who might see. They were mere hours away from ending it all, for good or ill, and he needed to let some of this immense weight go. Wanted to share this rare and potent courage that was coursing through him, allow her to drink her fill so they could brave this great unknown together. 

He kissed her, and she returned it in kind, fervently and without reservation. 

They separated peacefully, like the slow parting of a cloud by a sunbeam, and he wanted to tell her… just to be sure she knew in case the unthinkable happened.

But something in her eyes stayed him, telling him that she knew, _oh_ … she knew, but he’d have time enough to tell her after their job was done.

The sirens began to blare, crashing into their lovely reverie, yellow lights strobing over the deck harshly, announcing the arrival to the fly-out point. Crew members began streaming out onto the deck, throwing off the lashings and preparing for the final phase: the drop-in via helicopter corps. 

Jon looked back to his copilot, heart hammering against his ribs, offered her a tiny grin. “Let’s go.”

Within a few, harried moments, him and Dany were suited, armored and stepping into the harness of their Dragon Unit. He lifted his helmet over his head and looked over at her. She was already watching him, her stance strong and her face lined with a determination only a fool would ever stand against. 

The Night King didn’t know what was coming for him, the poor bastard. 

They nodded to each other at the same time, pulled their helmets on and he was falling forward, into the soft blue glow of the Drift. 

_”Neural handshake complete,”_

+

The wind was brutal, buffeting and howling against the plates of Balerion as they were towed via helicopter to their drop point. 

He looked over at his copilot, his comrade, as the steaming shadows of Old Valyria swam into view on the horizon. Dany’s jaws were clenched, eyes hard and cold as iron. She was transformed: some queen of death and ruin, ready to rain down hellfire on these strange intruders to her realm. 

She looked back at him, something in her expression shifting, her mouth turning up a bit. “You look like you could kill a Walker with your bare hands, Ranger,” she quipped. 

He huffed. “Could say the same for you.”

“Good thing you two don’t have to kill these bastards with your bare hands,” Tyrion chirped over the comms.

“Aye, or alone,” Tormund crowed excitedly. 

“I still can’t believe we let you in one of these things, Commander,” Jon called back with his friend’s old rank, looking over to their left where Tormund and Brienne’s unit, coined rather old fashionedly as ‘Oathkeeper’, hovered alongside them. 

“That’s Ranger to you, Ranger,” Tormund shot back with glee. 

“Almost to the drop point,” Tyrion interjected. “Systems check.”

“ _All clear_ ”s came from all Units. They were 30 strong, the largest Unit force assembled in history. Most hailed from Dragon Pit Base, but a few from Rag Man’s Harbor in Braavos and at least two teams from Volantis.   


“Ports sealed?” Tyrion inquired.

“Ports sealed,” came the chorus from all present.

“Dropping in three…” 

Jon glanced over at Dany, the air thickening and crackling between them. She managed a watery little smile that made his heart clench.

“Two…”

She took a hand from the controls, brought two fingers to her chest, leveled them to him, and pointed them back to her heart. 

_“One!”_

Jon lurched forward in his harness as Balerion was released from the tow cables, crashing into the frothing ocean below with a mighty rumble. The front screen of their Unit was washed with sea foam and the spray of their comrades being dropped in a smiliar fashion before they were sinking, the water swallowing them up in a dark and deepening press. 

They hit the ocean floor after a few seconds that felt like ages, Balerion shuddering and shaking under the impact as mutated, two-headed fish scattered in fear around them.

“You have 18 minutes until the radiation boils you up or you pass out from exhaustion,” Tyrion warned them all. “Good luck.”

Their lights flickered to life, glaring white pillars of dust knifing through a murky dark. Jon couldn’t help but feel chills as he looked to his left and right, seeing the line of Dragon Units marching forward… into what hell they did not know. 

He glanced over at Dany, watching the line of what was, essentially, their defense marching into a black and bleak unknown. She looked as equally sickened as he felt. 

_”Alright?”_ he asked her through the soft fog of the Drift.

_”Yes,”_ she answered with more confidence than he would have thought. 

“Wolf and Dragon, you’re clear to go,” the voice of an unknown tech filtered in, garbled and staticky through their comms. 

Dany nodded to him and they stepped forward. 

They marched and marched, the seconds stretching into minutes and the minutes stretching into ages, it seemed. Moving fully submerged was significantly more arduous, and not something any of the present pilots had been trained in. It made a perilous mission all the more dangerous, as their usual Drift times would, essentially, be cut in half. 

Finally, they came upon the glowing red mark on the map projected in front of them, but there seemed to be nothing— just desolate seafloor. 

Jon could see the line of flood lights before him as the Units all rumbled to a halt, waiting and, perhaps, resting. 

“Coming in, command,” the voice of Yara Greyjoy sounded over their comms, “we aren’t seeing shit down here.”

There was a pause, nothing but wavering static sounding from the other end. 

“Command!” Dany called, panic just barely kept from her voice. 

“Shit,” someone else muttered. 

Jon felt his skin go cold under his suit and armor. He reached forward, flipping on the infrared display on the console, their final set of eyes in the oblivion. His heart sank to the soles of his feet, his tongue turning to lead in his mouth at what it revealed. 

_”Fuck,”_ he breathed. 

Three, then four then _six_ angry red blotches were scurrying and coalescing, forming a nearly impenetrable wall of unseen radioactive monsters before them. A fortress of evil, awaiting their attack. 

“Nobody fucking move,” Dany called over the comms to everyone, seeing exactly what he was seeing. With every second that passed, it seemed more Walkers were crawling up from some fissure in the earth, from hell itself. 

“What the hells are we supposed to do?” Arya snarled, patience long since run dry. “We only have ten minutes left, now.”

Before either of them could answer, Jon looked up at the blaze of a phosphorescent white light, glaring through the warbly holograph of hidden demons in their path. Some impatient soul had launched a flare, its usual power and momentum weakened by the weight of the ocean, but it arced in a brilliantine, golden glow all the same and illuminated the grisly scene that awaited them. 

“By the old gods and the new…” Brienne whispered into her comms, and that was the last he heard of any of his comrades. 

Hell was unleashed, and Jon and Dany stood, some ways away in their strategic and protected position with a warhead strapped to their back watching the flares of devilish blue and molten red fuse and flash before them in the ghoulish gloom. 

“We have to do something,” Dany called to him, her face pale, looking on helplessly as their comrades were swamped, one by one. 

“We have to take out their king,” he reminded her firmly, jaws clenching in grim determination. “If we do that, then they all die.”

They stood for another idle, tortorous moment, looking on helplessly as Unit after Unit was crushed under talon and fang, silver threads of escape pods spreading out into the abyss like silken webs. 

“Jon,” Dany said suddenly, “hold on.”

He looked to her in question, but did as told, bracing himself within his harness. Dany reached forward, flipped open the casing over the switch that controlled their rear jets and gave him a beseeching look.

He nodded, the smile fighting its way onto his face too strong to deny. 

_”Rear thrusters engaged,”_ came the cool voice of the AI.

They were lifted from the silty floor, and they both leaned forward, positioning all that considerable power toward their target. 

The thrust was more sluggish down here, but it was momentum all the same. They raced toward the line of fire, the screeches of the Walkers filling their comms with an awful racket as they drew nearer and nearer. 

Just as they began crossing the line of fire, a Walker cried out in anguish and, perhaps, in warning, catching sight of them escaping over the throng of defenses. Jon inwardly cursed. 

“Get ready!’ he called to Dany just as the Walker in question used the height and strength of the Dragon Unit beneath it to surge upward with a wild yell, claws spread wide like an eagle descending on their prey. 

With a deafening crash, the Walker found its mark, knocking them off course and sinking them to the seafloor. “Cut the thrusters!” he cried, knowing that they needed as much fuel as possible for what was to come.

Dany did as ordered and they were jostled to and fro within the beast’s clutches. When the jets at their back flickered out, they sunk like stones. 

Dany roared in fury, activating Dark Sister as they both took on fighting poses. With a mighty swing, they relieved their attacker’s head from its shoulders. Its claws fell limp and they just managed to regain their posture before they fell back to the sea floor.

But the jig was up now, and the Walkers who had previously been preoccupied with their fellow pilots were now surging forward. 

“Fuck!” Jon shouted as he caught sight of the mass of hellish blue bearing down upon them. To both his dismay and profound respect, many of their comrades who had not had to flee were chasing after their foes, managing to grab some by the tail almost in a comical manner, yanking them back to renew their abandoned battles. 

Dany was similarly moved, but they did not have much time to admire their fellow pilots’ courage. 

“ _Run!_ ” Jon cried as he heard the scrape of talon on metal, a particularly stealthy Walker gaining on them, and fast. 

Him and Dany marched Balerion forward as fast as they could, grunting in the effort. Sweat was pouring from his temples, pooling at his collar bones. Their panting was all that could be heard for a moment that felt like years. 

“ _Six minutes and counting,_ ” the AI reminded them. 

_Shit, shit, shit…_ was all Jon could think as they marched ever forward, though they knew not where. 

“Jon!” Dany breathed through her panting, pointing ahead, past the infrared screen that he was studying, where the red splotches were now pursuing them madly, gaining on them much too fast, like moths to a flame. 

Just ahead was a cleft in the seafloor, the black edges limned in a ghostly white-blue, the light throbbing in an odd malevolence. 

Just as his heart was rising with some small triumph, they were hit from the front. 

A mean, low-slung creature of immense size and strength had slithered up from the blue slurry before them beyond their notice. It caught them by the breast plate in its mean claws, screaming in bloodlust as it rocked them back to the seafloor in a plume of detritus and silt. 

“Fuck off!” Dany yelled, and they both initiated the Singing Harpy missile array, uncaring of its questionable efficacy in such alien climes. 

The light blinded them both for a moment, but it seemed that the missiles only served to annoy the monster, their paths thrown off-kilter by the water. As it screeched and shook its head in fury, Balerion now fully faced the dim and distant sun swimming through the folds of darkened sea above them. Jon thought numbly, almost satisfyingly, that it might be the final glimpse of sunlight he may ever have. 

The Walker roared out in rage, its claws tightening in their Unit’s fuselage, metal shrieking in protest as it crumpled under its stony talons. 

“Jon…” Dany called to him, terrifyingly soft, as the creature began pecking at Balerion’s screen with its strange, curved beak. He looked over at her, his stout-hearted and fierce copilot, and could only see abject fear in her eyes. 

Blow after blow, the creature was painting thin silver lines into the military-grade, ballistic-tested plexiglass 10 inches thick, the spindly threads spreading before their eyes like some macabre spider’s web. 

Jon felt bile rise in his throat, his heart shuddering to a bitter halt within his chest. 

In any other circumstance, the mission would be aborted. He would tear his harness off with little more ado and pluck Dany from her own like a grape from the vine and throw them both into the escape pod at their backs, leaving Balerion to smolder at the bottom of the Narrow Sea for eternity. 

_”Right thruster down,”_ the AI pointed out, _”Fuel leak critical… Four minutes and counting…”_

But this was not just any other mission, this was it— the end of all things. And they had yet to see the Night King, the shadowy demon that had brought him and Dany, and all their brave comrades, here to the bottom of a radioactive ocean in the first place.

They couldn’t surrender now. 

Heart stuttering back to a shaky start against his ribs, he found his voice. “Hey!” he shouted over to Dany. She looked at him, panic and dread just surfacing behind her mossy eyes. “We got this, okay?” 

She hesitated, her face grim, but nodded, her confidence in him unquestioning, unthinking and he felt the heavy weight of such gifts steel his nerve. He lunged forward in his harness, smashed his hand on the fuel release button. 

The massive turbine beneath them roared to life, and the jet of energy burned through their Walker assailant like fire through old newsprint. The creature shrieked out in pain, its body crumbling into ash, ripped apart under angry red lines of fire, distant armies advancing over the thorny landscape of its hide, and they were free. 

That was when Jon noticed they were still falling. 

Although their one fatal encumbrance was now a nonissue, they both knew that they had been thrust over the precipice, and now were falling, falling with no inkling as to where they would land. 

“We have to turn around and we have to stop,” Dany told him, her face as grim as he’d ever seen it. He nodded, putting on the thrusters on last time, the halt in their momentum clumsy and sluggish, but one of their jets being down proved a boon. They were spun around to face their unknown fate. 

Above them, they could hear the angry howls of the Walker thralls as they scrambled down the cliff face to rip them to shreds. Before them, the water shimmered and rippled, a heat of what was seemingly a buried star hidden within the earth boiling the very ocean it resided in. The light was searing, leaving Jon’s vision streaming with blue-white phosphenes. 

“Oh my god,” Dany whispered. 

There seemed to be a pool of sorts before them, as if they stood on some strange and distant shore though they were hundreds of feet below the waterline. From the dappled edges of this turbid, gauzy surf came a creature of a monstrous size, rising from the simmering broth of radiation it sheltered in. Massive, primordial claws dug into the silt of the ocean as pale as ash, an enormous head crowned in icy thorns pushed through the blue slurry like a dandelion through frost. 

_”Two minutes and counting…”_

The thralls behind them fell back, mortified of their own ruler, and Jon and Dany stood before the king of gods and demons, stupefied. 

A crackling came over the comms… “ _Abort, abort!_ ” it seemed to say, but neither of them paid much attention. 

“What do we do now?” Jon asked weakly, strangely awed by the sight before him. 

Before Dany could answer, the Night King cried out, the sound unlike anything he had ever heard or, he suspected, would ever hear again in this moral realm. The force of the call shook their beleaguered Dragon Unit like a rag doll, pushing them back some paces, Balerion’s feet leaving deep troughs in the silt as they braced against the impact a little too late. The strength of it filled Jon with a strange vigor and power. He, strangely and abruptly, realized why this demon of an unholy making could command such a savage army. 

Dany looked over at him as they recovered. The Night King was hefting himself fully from his poisonous bath, turning towards them in curiosity, the bomb on their back obviously intriguing him despite his plush cloister of gamma waves and free radicals. 

“You’re going to have to trust me,” she told him.

“You know I do,” he answered unthinkingly, watching in strange rapture as the Night King lifted his mighty weight from the depths of the earth and began to lumber toward them. 

“Start the ignition sequence,” she told him, taking up a runners stance in her harness.

That shook him from his spell. “Start the… _ignition sequence_?” he demanded. 

She simply nodded. 

The ground beneath them was beginning to shake with the monster’s slow footfalls. “Dany, we need to get out of here… _now_.” He glanced back towards the Night King. The fucker opened its gruesome jaws and let forth a jet of white-hot, blue flame, grazing just over the top of Balerion’s head with an almighty shudder that shook him to the roots of his teeth. “They’ll nuke him remotely—“

Dany shook her head, and he understood, abruptly and in terrible, damning clarity. 

“We can’t even get comms down here, Jon,” she pointed out quietly, offering him a sad smile. “A remote fuse—“

_”One minute and counting,”_ the AI called out in grim warning. _”All pilots to escape pods… T-minus 59 seconds… 58 seconds…”_  


Jon swallowed, nodded, turned to the center console. “Initiating ignition sequence,” he called out as he flipped open the plastic casing for the manual ignition. 

Dany gave him another, watery little smile and began walking Balerion, by herself, toward the edge of the smoking, alien shore before them. 

Jon flipped the multiple switches, smashed his thumb to the permission sequence, turned the laughably archaic key. 

_”Warhead armed,”_ the AI informed them. _”Warning: warhead armed. Detonation in T-minus 60 seconds.”_

They had two clocks against them, now, with hundreds of feet of ocean above them and a demon that defied all mortal understanding before them. He was damn sure and certain those were odds he would never take with anyone but the woman beside him, walking a damaged Dragon Unit all by her damned self into a radioactive lake under a boiling sea. 

“Dany!” he shouted, ripping the leads from his suit, throwing the restraints of his harness off him with very little care. “Dany, we can make it!” 

“Just a few more… steps…” she gritted out, sweat popping from her temples, her neck corded with the strain. 

Jon glanced through the cracked screen of Blaerion, the hulking, white mass of the Night King looming ever nearer, his great, ugly snout arching closer to sniff at the tasty morsels of radioactive sludge that he so craved. 

“Dany!” he cried, grabbing hold of her harness just as the Night King reached out and grasped their Unit around the middle, plucking it from the silt like a daisy. 

_”T-minus 20 seconds… 19 seconds…”_

He tore his helmet off, not caring how it would affect the Drift. Dany cried out in pain, and he lunged toward her, ripping off leads and wires as if they were poisonous snakes. 

_”Warning! Neural handshake incomplete. Warning!”_

_”Shit!_ ” he cried as the Night King’s claws tightening around Balerion’s thick armor, his white claws punching through as if it were no more than paper. Water hissed through, alarms sounded loud and raucous in his ears, red lights blinking and blaring in his eyes as he ripped the helmet off Dany’s head without much grace or care. 

She threw her arms around his shoulders with a sob. “Jon! Jon, I’m sorry…”

He couldn’t possibly answer, dragging them both to the back of the cockpit, water already sloshing around his ankles. He’d make damn sure there was nothing for her to be sorry for.

_”Warning! Fuselage breech! Warning! War head detonation in T-minus 10 seconds… 9 seconds…”_

He slammed his fist through the glass-covered casing of the escape pod controls, certain that if he lived through this, he’d certainly need stitches but it hardly mattered now.

The hatch for the pod went up with a sharp ‘hiss’, water already flooding in at an alarming rate. With every last drop of strength left to him, he threw him and Dany into the little pod meant for one, and blindly kicked his heel out to the button that would close the hatch and send them hurtling to the surface. 

The door slammed closed, water splashing to their knees as the pod prepared to jettison. He did the only thing he could in those few, agonizing moments as he felt Balerion quake and tremble in the Night King’s deathly grip, and held onto Dany, knuckles white and bruising, chin notched over the crown of her hair, bracing her between his legs that he’d wedged on the opposite wall. Normally, they’d strap in, the momentum of the pod dangerous without proper restraint, but there was no time for that. 

“Dany,” he choked, “hold onto me.”

She buried her face in his chest, arms twined around him like rope. 

_”5 seconds… 4 seconds…”_

Jon felt his stomach bottom out just as the jets for the pod green-lined and they were launched hard and fast up and up and up. He gritted his teeth, the speed and pressure almost unbearable, clutching Dany so closely to him it would be a wonder if he didn’t break any bones. 

Before he knew quite what was happening, the pod breeched, shooting into the air before losing momentum and crashing back into the choppy water, jarring him to the very marrow, making his ears ring loudly. 

They stayed like that for some time, bobbing like a cork and twined tightly together, not daring to believe that they had made it out alive. Jon felt some of his senses slowly returning, the slosh of the water on the metal hull filtering slow and unsure in his ears, the feel of the gentle rock of the waves.

He loosened his grip on her, just a bit. “Dany…” he said softly, his voice maybe a touch triumphant. 

“Jon…” she answered creakily, looking up at him in trepidation. “Is this… are you… real?”

He laughed, something strange and thrilling gripping him at seeing her eyes, bright and vital and very much alive. He grasped her face in his hands and shook his head before knocking his bleeding fist onto the release control for the hatch above them. 

It slid open and the rush of cold air was almost unbearable and seemed to transform them both, releasing them of the last, oppressive bonds of fear and dread. He disentangled from her with a murmured apology and hoisted himself onto the flat, deck-like front. The pods were designed to act like rafts once engaged, orange floats making them a sea-faring vessel, for now. 

He sat himself on the edge of the hatch, reaching a hand down to help Dany up. She settled herself beside him and looked around in wonder. 

The ocean was gray and choppy, but to their left the line of aircraft carriers that had taken them here were waiting, gray and imposing against the sky. In front of them, dozens of other rafts darted the sea. And that’s when he heard it.

Distant cheers and clapping, whoops of victory and celebration. 

Jon hollered back, waving back to his comrades, the triumph of coming out with their lives after such a perilous endeavor simply too much to believe fully, but he’d take it at this juncture. Beside him, Dany laughed, seemingly still too weak to utter anything more than that, and fell into his side in a thorough and potent relief. 

Dany gasped and quaked against his side and he looked down at her in alarm. But she simply looked back up at him, eyes overbought with tears and lips wavering with emotion. 

There was nothing he could possibly say, so he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his brow to her own in a heady, dizzy happiness just as the hiss of rain on the water added to the raucous chorus of life around them. 

Above them, a helicopter was descending, a line being lowered, but he hardly noticed.

“We did it,” she managed, her voice a hopelessly frail thing under the weight of all she was feeling. 

He laughed, loud and bright and real, and kissed her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wooooooo, boy. thanks so much for sticking with me, loves. i hope it was worth the wait and everything makes sense. this is such a fucking weight off my shoulders. can you tell it kind of got away from me??
> 
> thanks again to the wonderful justwanderingneverlost for that stunning mood board.
> 
> love all you dearly. tell me what you think and com say hi @frostbitepandaaaaa!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much to the Jonerys fam. this has been one fucking wild ride after another, fo us all and for me personally, so thank you for your enduring friendship and support. 
> 
> thank you to [justwanderingneverlost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justwanderingneverlost) for the sparkly new mood board (it makes me wanna cry just looking at it) and for her patience with me as i pelted her with questions and requests for validation. 
> 
> this work is unbetaed... i just couldn't subject [hardlyfatal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlyfatal) to it. sorry, love, you'll thank me later. 
> 
> hope this wacky yarn provides all you precious souls with some much needed comfort and entertainment. take care of yourselves and enjoy (within the comfort of your own home)!
> 
> Part two is finished and will be up next week! Part three shortly after :)
> 
> tell me what you think and come say hi [@frostbitepandaaaaa!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/frostbitepandaaaaa)


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